Mithrandir’s blog

This just in, apparently blue whales have a heart the size of a car.

Holy shit.

Pigeons: Smarter than a three-year-old

News from Japan that may make parents scramble for their Baby Mozart CDs.

Prof. Shigeru Watanabe of Keio University and a grad student found the pigeons were good at identifying their own mug in a video image. The birds could distinguish between video self-images that showed their movements vs. video images that didn't show their movements. That was even with a 5-7 second delay in the video.

The average three-year-old child has trouble recognizing their self-image with just a two-second delay.

We know self-recognition isn't uniquely human. Chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants also have the ability. The pigeon finding suggests an animal doesn't need a large brain to know its own image.

And sorry, kids -- this self-recognition thing? It's for the birds.

Ancient cave linked to early Christians in Jordan

AMMAN, Jordan — Archaeologists in Jordan have discovered a cave underneath one of the world's oldest churches and say it may have been an even more ancient site of Christian worship. But outside experts expressed caution about the claim.

Archaeologist Abdel-Qader al-Housan, head of the Rihab Center for Archaeological Studies, said this week that the cave was unearthed in the northern Jordanian city of Rihab after three months of excavation and shows evidence of early Christian rituals.

The cave is under St. George's Church, which some believe was built in the year 230, though the date is widely disputed. That would make it one of the oldest churches in the world, along with one unearthed in the Jordanian southern port of Aqaba in 1998 and another in Israel discovered in 2005.

Al-Housan said there was evidence that the underground cave was used as a church by 70 disciples of Jesus in the first century after Christ's death, which would make it the oldest Christian site of worship in the world.

He described a circular worship area with stone seats separated from a living area that had a long tunnel leading to a source of water. He said the early Christians hid there from persecution.

A mosaic inscription on the floor of the later church of St. George above refers to "the 70 beloved by God and the divine" who founded the worship there.

S. Thomas Parker, a historian at North Carolina State University who led the team that discovered the church in Aqaba, said that while he hadn't seen the Rihab site, any such claim should be taken with a degree of caution.

"An extraordinary claim like this requires extraordinary evidence," he said. "We need to see the artifacts and dating evidence to suggest such an occupation in the 1st century A.D."

Parker asked how archeologists could be certain whether the "cave was actually a center of Christian worship."

The archaeologist also noted that mosaics are difficult to date unless there is a precise date in the text of the mosaic inscriptions themselves and typical mosaic inscriptions with Christian themes are from the 5th to 6th century.

"It's quite possible that there was a cave with earlier occupation which was later converted to Christian use. But to make the jump that this was actually used by Christians fleeing Jerusalem in the 1st century A.D. seems like a stretch to me," Parker said.

Australian archaeologist Kate da Costa of the University of Sydney, who works in northern Jordan where the cave was found, also said the evidence needs to be confirmed by other archaeologists.

"And even if the cave can be proved to have been in use in the first (century) A.D., there needs to be additional evidence that it was used by Christians," she told the AP.

She also said that St. George's church is not universally accepted as the oldest church in the world. Da Costa said a date of 230 for a constructed church "is over 200 years earlier than any other known church."

Archimandrite Nektarious, bishop deputy of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in Amman, hailed the discovery, calling it an "important milestone for Christians all around the world and right here at home."

"It confirms that Christians in this region are not strangers," he said. "They are real citizens who have always had roots in this region from those days until the present."

So there's a ridiculous documentary coming out tomorrow about intelligent design. Expelled. My hope is that others will go see it for me and tell me how it is. I fear that if I go myself I may just have to slaughter everyone who laughs at Stein's (and the producers) intellectually dishonest comments and the likely misconstrued portrayals of those such as Professor Dawkins and others. I mean, the moment I saw the preview with Stein asking his teacher about how we got here in the first place, I was looking for a shotgun to shoot myself in the face with. I own no shotgun, of course, otherwise I would not be writing this rant. Sooooo, if anyone sees it, be sure to tell me how (bad) it is. I have already read Dawkins' review. Of course I didn't expect an objective account from him, but his own personal stories about what happened to him and PZ Myers at a special showing of the documentary are quite amusing...and of course how the producers have edited and/or twisted the words of scientists to make them sound ridiculous. But that should probably be expected with any documentary: or at least any documentary dealing with religion or politics. Here's Dawkins' ravaging account and review:

Lying for Jesus?

So Yahoo put up this awesome video about elephants playing soccer. I was impressed. Click the following link:

Click on me you bastard

            Perhaps the central problem evident in any abortion debate is that there does not seem to be a moderate position. Both the liberal and conservative position assert judgments that, once accepted, seem to result in extreme and troublesome implications. On the one hand, certain liberals tell us that a human embryo (and even a fetus) does not have the same moral status as a human person.[1] They then argue that it is morally permissible to deliberately abort an innocent embryo or fetus even though it is obviously wrong to deliberately kill an innocent person. The liberal is thus given the great difficulty of drawing a non-arbitrary line as to when something—like an embryo—should be given the same moral status as a person. On the other hand, certain conservatives tell us that embryos and fetuses are (or will eventually be) persons and that they should thus be given the same moral status as any adult human person. From this it is sometimes argued that abortion is always wrong in the same way deliberately killing innocent persons is always wrong.

The purpose of this paper will be to critique this conservative argument and to show that it is not clear that deliberately aborting embryos is equivalent to deliberately killing innocent persons. First, I will spell out the implausible implications that result from accepting the conservative conclusion that human embryos have the same moral status as persons. I will use these implausible implications to suggest that our intuitions concerning the regretfulness of death and the immorality of killing must concern more than mere considerations about the potential or future of persons.

            Many think that the problem faced by the liberal—that of non-arbitrarily determining when something gains the full moral status of a person—spells a decisive defeat for his position. However, in his brilliant paper, “The Scourge: moral implications of natural embryo loss,” Toby Ord shows us that there is an equally great and disturbing problem if we accept the judgment that embryos are, in fact, persons with full moral status. The argument is very simple and can be expressed as follows:

1)      Early embryos are human persons with full moral status (conservative claim).

2)      It is a fact that roughly 45-75 percent of all early embryos are spontaneously aborted each year.[2]

3)      Therefore, it is a fact that roughly 45-75 percent of all human persons conceived each year die without ever reaching term.

            The first premise is simply the conservative claim that we are, for the sake of the argument, accepting as true. All humans during any stage of development—whether early embryos, late fetuses, newborn infants, or young children—have full moral status. They are all persons. To deliberately kill (or abort) any one of them is as wrong as deliberately killing an innocent adult human being.

The second premise is a factual claim. As Ord has pointed out, these facts have been firmly established and are widely known within the medical community. While the exact percentages vary across the board—depending on which textbook one uses and even perhaps on what country one is studying—we can be confident that 45-75 is a good rough estimate. Ord’s study concentrated on the population of the United States in 2002. On the lowest estimate, the number of spontaneous abortions in that year in that country turned out to be no less that 90 million.

The conclusion that results if we accept these two premises is that, on average, no less than 90 million human persons die each year in the United States alone before they reach term (or, more precisely, within the first two weeks of conception). This is a drastic and troubling implication that results from simply accepting the conservative claim that embryos (or at least early embryos) have the full moral status of an adult human being. It means that at least half the persons conceived each year die long before they are born. The question then becomes: why are we not taking action to combat this great loss of life?

Anyone familiar with the global struggle against the life-threatening AIDS virus or against cancer knows the immense weight that we should—and in fact do—place on combating such diseases. Various individuals and organizations make it their aim to raise awareness about these diseases and to raise money in search of a cure. We might even say that the search for the cures to these diseases is among the most important endeavors humans are currently undertaking. To rid the world of AIDS and cancer would save millions of lives annually. And yet neither of these diseases claims nearly as many lives as 90 million persons per year. It seems quite peculiar then that the same human effort is not being spent to combat the devastating effects of spontaneous abortion. The situation is even more profound that this, however. Not only are we not going to great lengths to prevent spontaneous abortion, we are hardly going to any lengths at all. Again, if early embryos are human persons, why does the adult human population show such a lack of concern for this potentially enormous problem (what Ord calls “The Scourge”)? Ord’s essential claim is that such a lack of concern among the public is evidence that very few individuals actually believe that the full moral status of an adult human being begins at conception and should be attributed to early embryos. There are two responses to Ord that I wish to briefly address.

One potential response is that the human population at large is simply ignorant of the factual information. Spontaneous abortion is, after all, not well known among the public. If only the public were enlightened about the facts of spontaneous abortion, then they would begin to act and go to great lengths to solve this problem. This response does not seem plausible, however, because the human population is not completely ignorant of the facts. As already mentioned, the medical community is aware of spontaneous abortion and has been aware of it for at least forty years. As also mentioned, with almost any disease—or natural disaster or any case of widespread death—there are individuals and organizations dedicated to making the public aware of the facts. How many laypeople are aware that HIV can be sexually transmitted; how many are aware that sunscreen can help prevent skin cancer; how many are aware of the Jewish holocaust? These facts are common knowledge. They are common knowledge because multiple individuals and organizations that are aware of the facts understand how important it is for this information to be given to the public. We can imagine then that if there was factual information that implied that “The Scourge” was happening and that millions of human persons were dying annually from it, such would be common knowledge. The lack of awareness concerning spontaneous abortion among the public then, I would argue, is actually evidence in favor of the claim that most individuals (and organizations) do not actually believe that early embryos have the moral status of an adult human being.

Another potential response to Ord’s argument would be to accept the drastic conclusion that millions of human persons die each year via spontaneous abortion. That is one thing that must be clear about Ord’s argument: there is nothing logically contradictory in accepting it. The conservative could quite consistently accept the claims that The Scourge is happening and that very few people, if at all, are attempting to rid the world of it. He could then use such claims as reasons for taking action. Perhaps Ord has shown us nothing more than the dire need to begin research into finding a cure for spontaneous abortion.

Such a response seems quite extreme, however, and will likely strike many of us as intuitively implausible. Upon hearing the facts given by Ord, I would suspect that many of us do not feel a sudden urge to alert the masses and raise up arms to combat spontaneous abortion. We do, however, seem to have an urge to combat cancer and holocausts. For one reason or another, the deaths of early embryos do not have the same moral impact on us as the deaths of adult human beings. This would seem to be a telling point about our moral intuitions. If we do not have the same sort of reaction to the facts of spontaneous abortion as we do to other instances of mass deaths concerning adult human beings, perhaps this implies that we do not attribute full moral status to embryos. In fact, I would argue along with Ord that this is the case. Anyone who wants to plausibly suggest that an early embryo has the same moral status as an adult human being must accept the fact that millions of human persons die every year as a result of spontaneous abortion and also tell us why we do not have serious qualms about this immense loss of life. Can the answer to this question be anything other than that most of us do not believe early embryos have the same moral status as persons? 

What Ord’s argument shows us then is that any argument that propounds to establish the conservative claim is extreme and implausible because one must simultaneously accept that millions of human persons die each year from spontaneous abortion and that we are morally obligated—or at least as obligated as the fight against cancer—as a society to immediately focus much of our efforts on combating this immense loss of life. That we do not have a severe moral reaction upon hearing the facts of spontaneous abortion and that we do not feel morally obligated to begin combating the loss of embryos seems to suggest that our moral intuitions do not attribute full moral status to embryos. In addition to this, however, there is another intuition of ours that Ord’s argument also helps clarify: our intuitions about the regretfulness of death and the immorality of killing.

            One traditional method used among philosophers to examine whether or not abortion is wrong is to first establish why killing an adult human being is wrong and then determine if such reasons can also be applied to embryos and fetuses. If they can be applied, abortion is wrong. If they cannot be, abortion is permissible or at least not obviously wrong. If Ord’s argument is successful in establishing the implausibility of the conservative claim, anyone who attempts to use the argument from potentiality or any other future-based argument to establish the wrongness of abortion, must rethink his or her position.

            In particular, Don Marquis has argued that it is the loss of an adult human being’s future that results from his death that makes killing him wrong (and his death regrettable). Or at any rate, the loss of his future is sufficient to make killing him wrong. It follows then that killing (or aborting) embryos and fetuses is also wrong because doing so results in the loss of a future-like-ours. What is appealing about this argument is that it can argue that abortion is wrong without accepting the conservative claim. If the loss of a future-like-ours is sufficient to make aborting an embryo wrong, then Marquis need not accept that embryos are persons or that they have, at this very moment, full moral status.

            If we take Ord seriously, however, we must question Marquis’ (or anyone’s) premise that the loss of a future-like-ours is sufficient to make killing wrong. If Ord is successful in establishing the we do not have the same level of regret upon hearing that millions of early embryos die via spontaneous abortion as we do upon hearing that millions die from cancer each year, then something else besides future considerations may be involved in the reasons why killing is wrong. We know full well that the death of an early embryo would have had a future-like-ours and yet we do not feel the same sort of regret as when we hear that a middle-aged human person has died. We think something has been stripped from the latter that has not been stripped from the former. Another essay would be required to flesh out what this “something” is, but there are various plausible suggestions in the literature already. For instance, some have suggested that it is the loss of a person’s activities, experiences, and projects that makes killing him wrong (and why his death is regrettable). Others have suggested that it is the ending of a self-conscious, rational being that makes killing him wrong. What Ord has done then is to make these suggestions all the more plausible. Death is not regrettable and killing is not wrong only because it ends a future-like-ours, but because it ends a future-like-ours that already had, in some way, a vested interest in life and in such a future.

            At the beginning of this essay I mentioned that there were no moderate positions on the abortion issue. I briefly mentioned how the liberal must face the problem of non-arbitrarily establishing a line of demarcation between persons and non-persons. Those who have suggested such lines—such as birth, viability, quickening or shortly after birth—have either been unable to tell us why their proposals are not arbitrary or have had to come to grips with the permissibility of infanticide. Many see the permissibility of infanticide as extreme and morally unacceptable. This has perhaps led some to think that there is no line of demarcation, full moral status begins at conception, and thus the conservative claim should be adopted. As I think this essay has shown, however, the conservative claim has difficulties of its own and results in extreme and implausible implications. Ord has shown us, I think, that our intuitions about the death of (at least) early embryos and our intuitions about the immorality of killing are not consistent with the conservative claim or with any other claim that tells us that abortion is obviously wrong in the same way killing innocent adult human beings is obviously wrong. In light of this, the liberal problem does not seem as problematic. It is still problematic to be sure, but finding a line of demarcation may be the only plausible option open to us, even if this commits us to the claim that infanticide is, at least sometimes, morally permissible.