Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Where do you stand on abortion? Let's have a civil debate.
by
UNOE
on 22/02/2020, 17:53:24 UTC
This argument is the continuum fallacy. I would suggest you read about both it and the sorites paradox.

You can't apply an arbitrary cut off date to a fetus, because nothing can not be a person at one second, and magically become one the next.
And I never said they could be. It is a continuum. Please read what I said again:

So no, a fetus obviously isn't unconscious at 23 weeks, 6 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes, and conscious at 24 weeks. It is a gradual process over the space of 2 weeks. If you make the cut off 24 weeks, i.e. before that process has begun, then you can be sure the fetus is not conscious since it does not have a cortex.

This is a good discussion, I like it.
I'd say the continuum fallacy goes in favor of the pro-life argument Smiley
The most common example of the continuum fallacy is Freds beard.
Quote
If a person has no beard, one more day of growth will not cause them to have a beard. Therefore, if Fred is clean-shaven now, he can never grow a beard (for it is absurd to think that he will have a beard some day when he did not have it the day before.).


The continuum fallacy proves there are things that are continually developing so we can't set a value that's true/false on them at a definite point in time. It's impossible.
It's obvious Fred has a beard 4 months in and that he doesn't have one 2 weeks in. But where do you draw the line? You don't because you can't.
At 2 months in, some people would say yeah, that's a grown beard, others would say no way that's a full grown beard. A transition happens where most people attribute different things to the same transitioning object. In this sense weeks and even days matter.

When human life is involved, we can't take the risk.