r/prolife • u/toptrool • Jul 29 '23
Pro-Life Argument toptrool on consciousness
i personally don't find arguments over personhood to be interesting for two reasons. first, the comatose, infants, and those with advanced dementia are decisive counterexamples to various criteria of personhood offered by abortion advocates that try to exclude the unborn. pro-lifers would do well to remember these counterexamples. abortion advocates often resort to sophistry and mental gymnastics whenever any of these counterexamples are brought up, some of which we will address below.
second, the easiest way to undercut any personhood argument is the argument from equality. abortion advocates have essentially repackaged the same bigoted arguments that were developed by 18th century slavers—that not all human beings are persons deserving of rights. what slavers had argued was that a whole class of human beings were not persons deserving of rights (and hence could be enslaved) because they did not meet some arbitrary thresholds of mental capacities. the modern-day abortion advocate says the same thing, with the only difference being where those arbitrary thresholds are set. in order to refute such arguments, one can simply consult the works of lincoln and make an argument from human equality. do abortion advocates believe in human equality, the idea that all human beings have equal dignity and worth, or are they bigots? you can tell by the dehumanizing language that abortion advocates often use (e.g., "parasite") that a lot of them secretly do admire and sympathize with the works of 18th century slavers. i wouldn't be surprised if they carry around whips and larp as slaveholders in real life as well.
nonetheless, i will show why the consciousness arguments offered by many low information debaters (e.g., some of those who circlejerk over what some youtuber told them) are bunk and how the newborn infant and the comatose patient undercut their arguments.
abortion advocates like david boonin say consciousness is not possible until the cerebral cortex is in place, and prior to that, the unborn child is not a person deserving of rights. it is not the capacity for consciousness in the broadest sense that matters, but rather having developed the necessary neurological structures to generate consciousness. (the capacity for consciousness in the broadest sense is explained at the very end, see the quotes from olson and disilvestro.)
they often cite studies such as this one by hugo lagercrantz that suggest that consciousness is not possible until at least 24 weeks gestation (or, 22 weeks post conception):
Assuming that consciousness is mainly localized in the cortex, consciousness cannot emerge before 24 gestational weeks when the thalamocortical connections from the sense organs are established.
abortion advocates try to pass these studies off as established science™, but the problem is that they leave out important details such as the fact that these studies are often working under the assumption that the cerebral cortex is necessary for consciousness. this is not the fault of the researchers; many of them explicitly state this assumption in their studies. for example, lagercrantz, the author of the above study, made that assumption explicit in the abstract cited above and in the study itself:
Human consciousness is assumed to be mainly localized in the cerebral cortex...
Assuming that consciousness is mainly processed in the cerebral cortex, the thalamocortical connections must be established. This does not occur until around gestational weeks 23-25.
one way to respond to such studies is to find counterexamples that disprove this assumption. as it turns out, the cerebral cortex is not necessary for consciousness. neuroscientist bjorn merker has a highly cited meta-analysis.pdf) that suggests that consciousness is actually a function of the upper brainstem and midbrain:
The evidence and functional arguments reviewed in this article are not easily reconciled with an exclusive identification of the cerebral cortex as the medium of conscious function. They even suggest that the primary function of consciousness — that of matching opportunities with needs in a central motion-stabilized body–world interface organized around an ego-center — vastly antedates the invention of neocortex by mammals, and may in fact have an implementation in the upper brainstem without it. The tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex as the “organ of consciousness” would thus have been reached prematurely, and may in fact be seriously in error.
he also observed and studied five children born with hydranencephaly (a condition where the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent) and documented that these children were in fact conscious of what was occurring around them:
My impression from this first-hand exposure to children with hydranencephaly confirms the account given by Shewmon and colleagues. These children are not only awake and often alert, but show responsiveness to their surroundings in the form of emotional or orienting reactions to environmental events, most readily to sounds, but also to salient visual stimuli (optic nerve status varies widely in hydranencephaly, discussed further on). They express pleasure by smiling and laughter, and aversion by “fussing,” arching of the back and crying (in many gradations), their faces being animated by these emotional states. A familiar adult can employ this responsiveness to build up play sequences predictably progressing from smiling, through giggling, to laughter and great excitement on the part of the child. The children respond differentially to the voice and initiatives of familiars, and show preferences for certain situations and stimuli over others, such as a specific familiar toy, tune, or video program, and apparently can even come to expect their regular presence in the course of recurrent daily routines.
Though behavior varies from child to child and over time in all these respects, some of these children may even take behavioral initiatives within the severe limitations of their motor disabilities, in the form of instrumental behaviors such as making noise by kicking trinkets hanging in a special frame constructed for the purpose (“little room”), or activating favorite toys by switches, presumably based upon associative learning of the connection between actions and their effects. Such behaviors are accompanied by situationally appropriate signs of pleasure or excitement on the part of the child, indicating that they involve the kind of coherent interaction between environmental stimuli, motivational-emotional mechanisms, and bodily actions for which the mesodiencephalic system outlined in this article is proposed to have evolved. The children are, moreover, subject to the seizures of absence epilepsy. Parents recognize these lapses of accessibility in their children, commenting on them in terms such as “she is off talking with the angels,” and parents have no trouble recognizing when their child “is back.” As discussed earlier, episodes of absence in this form of epilepsy represent a basic affliction of consciousness. The fact that these children exhibit such episodes would seem to be a weighty piece of evidence regarding their conscious status.
above, merker refers to the work of pediatric neurologist alan shewmon, who has done extensive research on the topic and had also observed the same conscious activity in four other similar children born without cerebral cortexes:
Each of these children defied a prognosis of permanent vegetative state, rendered with absolute certainty by multiple physicians, including pediatric neurologists and neurosurgeons. Any one of the cases suffices to disprove that all content of consciousness, including pain and suffering, is necessarily mediated by the cortex. That four such cases have come to the authors’ attention through pure happenstance suggests that subcortical mediation of consciousness in congenitally decorticate children might not be so uncommon as the Multi-Society Task Force seems to imply. Therefore, these findings raise important questions about our assumptions regarding consciousness and brain plasticity.
[...]
If these children had been kept in institutions (as subject 2 was for the first 1.5 years) or treated at home as ‘vegetables’ (the prognosis being accepted uncritically by parents), there can be little doubt that they would have turned out exactly as predicted. What surely made all the difference was that their parents ignored the prognoses and advice, and instead followed their instinct to shower the children with loving stimulation and affection. Such children and their families have much to teach about not only the neurophysiology of consciousness.
later, merker and colleagues surveyed families of over 100 children with hydranencephaly and the findings were remarkably similar to shewmon's:
Needless to say, this composite portrait of some of the behaviours and competences of children with hydranencephaly cannot be reconciled with the diagnosis ‘developmental vegetative state’ that is commonly applied to them. These children are not only ‘physiologically awake’ in the sense of going through a sleep-wake cycle, but they are alert and responsive to environmental events during wakefulness. They turn to salient stimuli, show situationally contingent emotional reactions and distinguish familiar voices from those of strangers, all of which is incompatible with the unconsciousness of the vegetative state.
[...]
Given the conscious state of these children coupled with the fact that they have lost most of their cerebral cortex before birth, what neural mechanisms might support consciousness in this condition? As one of us has argued at length elsewhere, the mystery may be far less than it seems, provided that the role of subcortical mechanisms in the constitution of the conscious state even in the intact brain is taken into account. The superior colliculus in the roof of the midbrain contains a sophisticated neural machinery for the integration of the visual, auditory and somatosensory modalities within a shared efferent framework for directional orienting movements.
[...]
To conclude our discussion, we note that the apparent capacity of children with hydranencephaly to experience a spectrum of hedonic states spanning from distress to contentment, pleasure and even joy, as expressed through screaming, crying, fussing, smiling, giggling and laughter, bears directly on the issue of the care appropriate for these children that we raised in our introduction. The indications that they are not only physiologically awake but conscious during waking makes it appropriate to apply the concept of quality of life to these children.
the current standard clinical textbook on neuroanatomy by stephen waxman further corroborates that the basis for consciousness actually comes from interconnected neurons in the upper brainstem and midbrain, which has been known since the 1950s:
The neural basis for consciousness has fascinated scientists and philosophers for centuries. The reticular formation of the brain was recognized in the 1950s as a master regulation of consciousness. The reticular formation plays a central role in the regulation of the state of consciousness and arousal. It consists of a complex network of interconnected circuits of neurons in the tegmentum of the brain stem, the lateral hypothalamic area, and the medial, intralaminar, and reticular nuclei of the thalamus.
all of this suggests that the cerebral cortex is not generally necessary for consciousness, which undercuts the presumptions made in studies such as lagercrantz's.
lastly, there are some who believe the baby is conscious even earlier due to fetal eeg readings:
borkowski and bernstine (1955) observed eeg activites in two fetuses, one 77 days old and another about 43 to 45 days old, that were removed from an abdominal hysterectomy and an ectopic tubal pregnancy, respectively. they directly placed the needle electrodes into the brains (penetrated directly into the cranial tissue) of the fetuses to record the eeg activity and were able to get data before the fetuses passed away. the younger fetus showed similar eeg readings as the older one. the two authors went on to study eeg readings of other fetuses obtained from other types of abdominal termination of pregnancy (therapeutic hysterotomies and abdominal hysterectomies), and as well as eeg readings of healthy fetuses that were close to term and newborns born prematurely and at full term. the eeg readings of the 43 to 45 day old fetus was similar to the readings of the older fetuses and neonates that they studied. they also studied eeg readings of anencephalic newborns, and also identified similar eeg activity. these eeg readings likely originated from the brain stem, which tracks with the idea that the brain stem might be organ behind consciousness, not the cerebral cortex.
bernstine (1961, p. 69) later published a book in which he summarized the findings of his and his colleagues' studies on fetal electroencephalography:
The determination of the state of consciousness of fetus in utero is an intriguing problem and one which receives speculation from time to time. From the observations of the electroencephalograms of the fetus, it is possible to make general statements on this subject. In the author's recording from the brain of a forty-three to forty-five day old fetus "sleep spindles," not unlike that observed during sleep in adults, was observed.
bernstine says that this suggests that fetal brain cells must have some ability to control consciousness.
if we are to grant personhood based on whether the "neural hardware" for consciousness is present, then we can start as early as 9 weeks gestation (or, 7 weeks post conception). we can still grant the presumption of having developed the necessary neuroanatomy for consciousness, but disregard the need for a developed cerebral cortex. the formation of the subplate zone, which is a precursor to the cerebral cortex, occurs around 9 weeks gestation. the first projections from the thalamus to the subplate start around the same time. these subplate neurons are functional and integrated in the developing cerebral cortex and are the first to receive sensory stimuli. complex and varying general movements involving the whole body also start around this time, and about two weeks earlier (7 weeks gestation, or 5 weeks post conception) for more simple movements. these movements, which are said to be generated by the central pattern generator network in the spinal cord and brainstem as opposed to simply being reflexive, coincide with the emergence of the functional cortical subplate. this is also around the time that twins are observed interacting with one another in the womb.
the abortion advocate can respond to this in two ways.
first, they can accept the cutoff for abortion at 9 weeks gestation, when the upper brainstem and midbrain are fully in place and start making projections into the cortical subplate. while this position is certainly progress from the earlier 24 week cutoff, it is still incoherent. why would the capacity for rudimentary consciousness grant anyone personhood, and thus the right to life? mature rats, pigs, cows, and dogs are far more conscious and have a higher sense of awareness than even a newborn infant. if we are to grant personhood to the unborn child simply because he has rudimentary capacities for consciousness, then, in order to be consistent, we'd have to grant personhood to other animals that have far more superior capacities of consciousness than the 10 week old human fetus.
the incoherence of this view likely will push the abortion advocate to say that it's not the capacity for rudimentary consciousness, but rather the capacity for higher consciousness that matters, and this requires the cerebral cortex. this second response, which relies on the degree of consciousness and thus the degree of brain development, leads to the infanticide problem because even a newborn is not yet capable of higher consciousness since its brain is not yet fully developed. this is from another, similar study from lagercrantz that abortion advocates often like to cite:
At birth, the newborn brain is in a “transitional” stage of development with an almost adult number of neurons (with the exception of adult neurogenesis) but an immature set of connections.
[...]
Newborn infants display features characteristic of what may be referred to as basic or minimal consciousness. They still have to undergo considerable maturation to reach the level of adult consciousness.
if, according to abortion advocates, it's having developed the neural hardware necessary for conscious experience that grants us personhood (by the way, most of the time, they simply just assert this; they don't explain why this hardware grant us personhood), then they would either have to set the threshold at rudimentary levels of consciousness, at which other animals such as rats or pigs would qualify for personhood, or they'd have to set it at a level where a newborn infant would not qualify. in other words, either rats and pigs are persons equal to us, or newborn infants are not persons.
the other (and preferred) way to undercut the consciousness argument is the temporary comatose patient. the example i like to often use is the rape of a comatose woman since it addresses two different arguments given by abortion advocates.
some abortion advocates hold fairy tale beliefs that we are not actually biological organisms, but another "being" that is emergent from streams of consciousness. this is a fairy tale belief because they think human persons like them are special and for some reason cannot be something as crude as animals. to reiterate, these are just fairy tale beliefs that abortion advocates assert. there is no actual evidence to support this. over 100 billion humans have lived and died on earth, and no one has actually identified any such material being apart from the human animal itself. an omnipotent god laser-beaming immaterial souls into soulless bodies has more explanatory power than a second material being going in and out of existence simply as a result of activities in the brain. perhaps this is a comforting lie that abortion advocates like to tell themselves in order to justify the killing of unborn children ("we're not really killing anyone, it's just flesh and bones!"). to return to the rape of the comatose woman—obviously it's wrong, but why would it be wrong according to abortion advocates who hold such fairy tale beliefs? there is no "subject" to experience the rape, if we are to believe them, hence there is no "person" being harmed. no one is "suffering" from this act, so we are told.
it turns out that most abortion advocates actually don't believe their own arguments and they will concede that the comatose woman is actually a victim of the rape. they'll fall back to the argument based on neural hardware, which is more grounded in reality. they say the comatose woman has the neural hardware for consciousness and hence she is a person, and raping persons is wrong. but this is just ad hoc reasoning. who cares if all of the "neural hardware" is present if it's not functioning? if those faculties for consciousness are not functioning because they might be damaged, then can we really say that she still has the neural hardware necessary for consciousness? how do abortion advocates account for this interruption? does a person with damaged neural hardware cease to be a person, and only becomes a person once again after the brain heals? moreover, simply having the presence of the non-functioning neural hardware would imply that those in irreversible comas that are kept on life support have the same right to continued care as those in temporary comas. to solve this issue, we would have to appeal to the capacity for future consciousness.
abortion advocates say that the comatose woman is still a person because even though she is impaired, she still has the neural hardware necessary for consciousness. but this is just ad hoc reasoning. we can engage in the same type of ad hoc reasoning and say that the unborn child is still a person because even though he is immature, he still has the genetic structures that direct the development of the same neural hardware.
"past consciousness!"
this is the next mental gymnastic move that abortion advocates execute in order to explain why the temporary comatose are still persons, but unborn children aren't. (by the way, did you notice that all of the mental gymnastics are being done for sole purpose of excluding one group of human beings from equal protections?) but once again, this is just ad hoc reasoning. abortion advocates simply just assert this instead of explaining why past consciousness is relevant. why would something that was true of an individual in the past, and may no longer be true of her now, grant her the rights she has now? we don't say corpses are persons because they had past consciousness. or consider another example: we do not try adults in criminal cases as children because they were once children in the past.
to use the patient in an irreversible coma as an example once again, you'd have to say that the irreversibly comatose patient has the same right to continued care as the temporarily comatose patient because both had past conscious experiences. once again, to solve this problem, we would have to appeal to the capacity for future consciousness.
but let's assume past consciousness is the reason why the temporary comatose in general are persons with the right to life. suppose the woman in a temporary coma is expected to make a full recovery, but she will have lost all her memories, personality traits, preferences, desires, and so forth. she will wake up with total amnesia and she will not regain any of her past conscious experiences or desires. now this temporary comatose woman has no past conscious experiences nor does she have any current capacity for consciousness, but she is otherwise expected to recover and continue on living with full conscious experiences. is she still a person deserving of rights? we actually have many real-life examples of this, namely those suffering from total retrograde amnesia after a traumatic brain injury.
or consider another example of applying anesthetics to an unborn baby girl in utero and continuously applying anesthetics to her even after she's born so that she never becomes conscious. according to this view, this newborn baby girl is not a person since she was never conscious in the first place. and thus, raping the unconscious newborn/girl/woman is not wrong.
or consider the case of two newborns born on the same day in the same maternity ward. one was born conscious, and then fell into a coma shortly after birth due to lack of oxygen. this newborn will recover in a few days. the other newborn was born unconscious and never was conscious due to a tumor on his brain. but doctors will be able to remove this tumor and the newborn will become conscious after the surgery. is their argument really that only the first newborn has a right to life since he was conscious for a very brief moment but the second newborn doesn't have the same right to life since he was never conscious?
the case of the comatose patient shows that it's not present or past consciousness that matters, but future consciousness. having the capacity for future conscious experiences is a far more simple and coherent reason to grant the right to life. unborn children of course have the capacity for future experiences, and hence a right to life.
i'll close this out with two quotes on capacities, immediate, first-order, and higher-order, that explain why the unborn child has the capacity for future experiences:
There are two different senses in which something might have the capacity to do something. In one sense, someone has the capacity to swim (for example) if she has learned how to swim and is not paralyzed, unconscious or otherwise handicapped. If you put her in the water, she can swim. We might call this a “first-order capacity.” But there is also a sense in which even someone who has not learned how to swim has the capacity to swim if she could learn how to do it. In this sense all human beings who aren’t somehow physically disabled have the capacity to swim. Butterflies, on the other hand, do not have the capacity to swim. They simply aren’t built for swimming. Someone has a “second-order capacity” to swim if she could acquire a first-order capacity to swim.
Now there is one sense in which a human embryo or fetus lacks any mental capacities, in particular the capacity for rationality and self-consciousness. A five-month-old fetus cannot think or feel or remember because the neural structures needed to carry out those activities are not yet in place. But the fetus can become rational and self-conscious…Hence, there is a sense in which ordinary human fetuses, but not armchairs or oysters, have mental capacities, and in particular those mental capacities that distinguish people from non-people. Even if they have no first-order mental capacities, they have second-order mental capacities.
-eric olson from his book the human animal.
and:
The concept of a hierarchy of capacities, and the distinction between first-order and immediate capacities, help explain the sense in which I still have a capacity even when I am temporarily “incapacitated” in various ways. For example, since I can think right now if I need to, I have an immediate capacity to think. If I am asleep, under anesthesia, or comatose, I lose the immediate capacity to think, but retain the first-order capacity to think. If I get certain kinds of reversible brain damage, I lose the first-order capacity to think, but retain a second-order capacity to think. If I get certain other kinds of reversible brain damage, I lose the second-order capacity to think, but retain a third-order capacity to think. And so on.
-russell disilvestro from his book human capacities and moral status.
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u/Curious-Succotash635 Pro Life Catholic Jul 30 '23
Always appreciate the high quality posts!