Greetings, gentlemen.

Scott DeSalvo:  >>[Stolyarov]'s not an Objectivist, under any definition I have read. Just because he can come up with an interesting name for a fiction, such as 'futuristically certain,' does not make the fiction reflective of reality.<<

How is it a fiction that the life you possess as an adult is not the same life you possessed as an embryo?

D.J. Glombowski:  >>I wonder, how can one be certain of the future without being omniscient?<<

I can be certain the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.  I can also be certain that a life will continue in the future unless force or natural causes exterminates it.

Robert Malcolm: >>never could understand those who just cannot or would not see the difference between potential and actual.... to me, this is like asking  ' when is a car a car as it goes down the assembly line? '... and it most certainly is not at the beginning!!<<

An unassembled car is not analogous to a human embryo.  An unassembled car is a group of components, if properly brought together, will become car.  Upon assembly is when a car begins.  So an unassembled car is akin to an unmated sperm and egg, the “unassembled” components of a new human being.  Upon conception is when a new human life is actualized. 

So, you gentlemen can gather from this that I’m in broad agreement with Mr. Stolyarov.  Even so, I would use Occam’s razor to eliminate Mr. Stolyarov’s term of art “futuristic certainty”.  He developed it to deal with the non-existent distinction many Objectivists make between potential and actual life at the embryonic stage of human development.  That distinction is a canard, the only purpose of which I can figure out is to rationalize an a priori political position with Objectivist principles.

The reason it is a canard is the law of identity.  A is A.  The life a human embryo possesses already exists.  The potentiality of life has been realized.  That life exists and will continue to exist as a single indivisible identifiable entity.  A fetus does not get a new life, nor does a newborn, a child, an adolescent, or an adult.  It is the same life throughout the continuum of the development of a human organism.  To deny this is to blank out.

So if abortion is to be justified, it must be on grounds other than the life of a human embryo is merely potential.

Regards,

Bill

Citizen Rat asks:

How is it a fiction that the life you possess as an adult is not the same life you possessed as an embryo?

This is answered by another question. What makes life valuable? What makes it worth living? What provides it with meaning?

For me, it’s: love; laughter; philosophy; work; play; checking out girls; music; logic; keeping fit; having sex; enjoying good wine and food; making decisions; making mistakes; a massive; complex range of emotions.

Does an embryo experience anything like this? Does it even come close to this, like a newborn might with exploration; wonder; experience; sensation; laughter; play?

That’s how it’s not the same.

Bill,

Once more around the mulberry bush.

The point is that they’re quite distinct concepts. They’re “not the same life” because one is a life and the other isn’t - and it’s a fiction to equate the two. A building block is not a building. Ayn Rand defined human life as the self-generating, self-sustaining process of a rational animal. Is an embryo self-generating and self-sustaining? No. I listed my own non-defining characteristics above. Does an embryo possess these capabilities? No.

This all changes if you define life by something else, arbitrarily. You could define a human life as “a possessor of human DNA.” But “a possessor of human DNA” would not make a useful standard of value for an ethical system. It’s not the possession of DNA that makes life worth living. It’s not the possession of DNA that makes you glad you’re alive. It’s those rational, self-generated actions I listed above.

The impossible: That which has never happened and can never happen. (The existence of God, for example)

The formerly possible: That which could happen in the past, but cannot happen in the future (The spontaneous formation of complex molecules on Earth, for example, as the Earth no longer has a reducing atmosfere).

The formerly existing: That which has been an actuality (not a mere possibility) in the past, but is an actuality no longer (The existence of dinosaurs, for example) 

The potential (or futuristically uncertain): That which has not yet happened, and can take place in one of many alternative ways. (This is a state applicable only to volition. For example, I could wear a red shirt or a blue shirt tomorrow, or I could choose some other color of shirt. Inanimate matter cannot follow one of many paths.)

The futuristically certain: That which has not yet happened, but will definitely take place in the future given certain present conditions (and absent volitional intervention). (This subsumes anything regarding the changes and processes exerted by inanimate matter, non-volitionally-conscious organisms, and the involuntary functions of the human body).

The actual: That which exists in the present moment (My computer, for example).

In layman’s terms, the six states can be referred to as:

• Cannot be
• Could have been
• Was
• Could be
• Will be
• Is

Please note that “potential” or “futuristic uncertainty” is in a certain regard the opposite of “futuristic certainty” or “mechanistic determinacy,” to use another term.  

This exposition clearly shows that, not merely is the fetus not a potential (i.e. futuristic uncertainty), but it is in fact the opposite of a potential! (According to Aristotle, the opposite of "A is X" is "A is not X." Thus, the opposite of "The fetus is futuristically certain" is "The fetus is futuristically not certain" or "The fetus is futuristically uncertain.")

Is this the insight for which Mr. Dawe dares to call me "evil" without warrant? If so, then the true nemesis lurks within his psyche!

I am
G. Stolyarov II
Editor-in-Chief, The Rational Argumentator
Proprietor, The Rational Argumentator Online Store
Author, Eden against the Colossus
Chief Administrator, Chicago Methuselah Foundation Fund