Mind and Brain

"I believe that we are rapidly transitioning from an Age of Information to an Age of Misinformation, and in many cases, outright disinformation." -- Al Seckel, in an interview published on Jeffrey Epstein's website, "Jeffrey Epstein Talks Perception with Al Seckel" Mark Oppenheimer's long-awaited exposé on Al Seckel, "The Illusionist," has now been published and I urge all skeptics to read it. Seckel, the former head of the Southern California Skeptics and a CSICOP Scientific and Technical Consultant who was listed as a "physicist" in every issue of the Skeptical Inquirer from vol. 11, no. 2 (Winter 1987-88) to vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter 1991) despite having no degree in physics, has long been known among skeptical insiders as a person who was misrepresenting himself and taking advantage of others. Most have remained silent over fear of litigation, which Seckel has engaged in successfully in the past. An example of a legal threat from Seckel is this email he sent to me on May 27, 2014: Dear Jim, News has once again reached me that you are acting as Tom McIver's proxy in spreading misinformation and disinformation about me. Please be aware that I sued McIver in a Court of Law for Defamation and Slander, and after a very lengthy discovery process, which involved showing that he fabricated letters from my old professors (who provided notarized statements that they did not ever state nor write the letters that McIver circulated, and the various treasures who were in control of the financial books of the skeptics, also came forth and testified that no money was taken, and McIver was unable to prove any of his allegations. The presiding Judge stated that this was the "worst case of slander and defamation" that he had ever seen. Nevertheless, even with such a Court Order he is persisting, and using (and I mean the term "using") you to further propagate erroneous misinformation. Lately, he has been making his defamatory comments again various people, and posting links to a news release article by the Courthouse News (a press release service) that reports the allegations set forth in complaints. Just because something is "alleged" does not mean it is True. It has to be proven in a Court of Law. In this case, after a lengthy discovery process (and I keep excellent records) the opposite of what was alleged was discovered, and the opposing counsel "amicably" dismissed their charges against me. The case was officially dismissed. In fact, the opposing counsel has been active in trying to get the Courthouse News to actively remove the entire article, and not just add a footnote at the end. I note that you have been trying to add this link to my wikipedia page. I have never met you, and am not interested in fighting with you. I am attaching the official Court document that this case was filed for dismissal by the opposing counsel. You can verify yourself that this is an accurate document with the Court. So, once again, McIver has used you. My attorneys are now preparing a Criminal Complaint against McIver for so openly violating the Court Order (it is now a criminal offense), and will once again open the floodgates of a slander and defamation lawsuit against him and his family, and anyone else, who aids him willing in this process. This time he will not have his insurance company cover his defense. This time that axe will come down hard on him. For now, I will just think you are victim, but please remove any and all references to me on any of your websites, and that will be the end of it. You don't want to be caught in the crossfire. Yours sincerely, Al Seckel -- Al Seckel Cognitive neuroscientist, author, speaker Contrary to what Seckel writes, we have, in fact, met--I believe it was during the CSICOP conference, April 3-4, 1987, in Pasadena, California.  I am not an agent of Tom McIver, the anthropologist, librarian, and author of the wonderful reference book cataloging anti-evolution materials, Anti-Evolution, who Seckel sued for defamation in 2007, in a case that was settled out of court (see Oppenheimer's article). I have never met Tom McIver, though I hope I will be able to do so someday--he seems to me to be a man of good character, integrity, and honesty. The news release Seckel mentions is regarding a lawsuit filed by Ensign Consulting Ltd. in 2011 against Seckel charging him with fraud, which is summarized online on the Courthouse News Service website. I wrote a brief account of the case based on that news article on Seckel's Wikipedia page in an edit on March 13, 2011, but it was deleted by another editor in less than an hour.  Seckel is correct that just because something is alleged does not mean that it is true; my summary was clear that these were accusations made in a legal filing. Seckel and his wife, Isabel Maxwell (daughter of the deceased British-Czech media mogul, Robert Maxwell), rather than fighting the suit or showing up for depositions, filed for bankruptcy.  Ensign filed a motion in their bankruptcy case on December 2, 2011, repeating the fraud allegations.  But as Seckel notes, Ensign did dismiss their case in 2014 prior to his sending me the above email. So why should anyone care?  Who is Al Seckel, and what was he worried that I might be saying about him? This is mostly answered by the Oppenheimer article, but there is quite a bit more that could be said, and more than what I will say here to complement "The Illusionist." Al Seckel was the founder and executive director of the Southern California Skeptics, a Los Angeles area skeptics group that met at Caltech.  This was one of the earliest local skeptical groups, with a large membership and prominent scientists on its advisory board.  Seckel has published numerous works including editing two collections of Bertrand Russell's writings for Prometheus Books (both reviewed negatively in the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies, see here and here).  He has given a TED talk on optical illusions and authored a book with the interesting title, Masters of Deception, which has a forward by Douglas R. Hofstadter.  Seckel was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and developed an association with a couple of cognitive psychology labs at Caltech--in 1998 the New York Times referred to him as a "research associate at the Shimojo Psychophysics Laboratory." His author bios have described him as author of the monthly Neuroquest column at Discover magazine ("About the Author" on Masters of Deception; Seckel has never written that column), as "a physicist and molecular biologist" (first page of Seckel's contribution, "A New Age of Obfuscation and Manipulation" in Robert Basil, editor, Not Necessarily the New Age, 1988, Prometheus Books, pp. 386-395; Seckel is neither a physicist nor a molecular biologist), and, in his TED talk bio, as having left Caltech to continue his work "in spatial imagery with psychology researchers as Harvard" (see Oppenheimer's exchanges with Kosslyn, who has never met or spoken with him and Ganis, who says he has exchanged email with him but not worked with him). At Cornell, Seckel associated with L. Pearce Williams, a professor of history of science, who had interesting things to say when McIver asked him about their relationship. While in at least one conference bio, Seckel is listed as having been Carl Sagan's teaching assistant, I do not believe that was the case. The Cornell registrar reported in 1991 in response to a query from Pat Linse that Seckel only attended for two semesters and a summer session, though a few places on the web list him as a Cornell alumnus. Seckel used to hang out at Caltech with Richard Feynman. As the late Helen Tuck, Feyman's administrative assistant, wrote in 1991, Seckel "latched on to Feynman like a leach [sic]." Tuck wrote that she became suspicious of Seckel, and contacted Cornell to find that he did not have a degree from that institution. You can see her full letter, written in response to a query from Tom McIver, here. As the head of the Southern California Skeptics, Seckel managed to get a column in the Los Angeles Times, titled "Skeptical Eye." Most of his columns were at least partially plagiarized from the work of others, including his column on Sunny the counting dalmation (plagiarized from Robert Sheaffer), his column on tabloid psychics' predictions for 1987 (also plagiarized from Sheaffer), and his column about Martin Reiser's tests of psychic detectives (plagiarized directly from Reiser's work). When Seckel plagiarized Sheaffer, it was brought to the attention of Kent Harker, editor of the Bay Area Skeptics Information Sheet (BASIS), who contacted Seckel about it. Seckel apparently told Harker that Sheaffer had given his permission to allow publication of his work under Seckel's name, which Sheaffer denied when Harker asked. This led to Harker writing to Seckel in 1988 to tell him about Sheaffer's denial, and inform him that he, Seckel, was no longer welcome to reprint any material from BASIS in LASER, the Southern California Skeptics' newsletter. While most skeptical groups gave each other blanket permission to reprint each others' material with attribution, Harker explicitly retracted this permission for Seckel. This is, I think, a good case study in how the problem of "affinity fraud"--being taken in by deception by a member of a group you self-identify with--can be possible for skeptics, scientists, and other educated people, just as it is for the more commonly publicized cases of affinity fraud within religious organizations. This just scratches the surface of the Seckel story. I hope that those who have been fearful of litigation from Seckel will realize that, given the Oppenheimer story, now is an opportune time for multiple people to come forward and offer each other mutual support that was unhappily unavailable for Tom McIver eight years ago. (BTW, one apparent error in the Oppenheimer piece--I am unaware of Richard Feynman lending his name for use by a skeptical group. He was never, for example, a CSICOP Fellow, though I'm sure they asked him just as they asked Murray Gell-Mann, who has been listed as a CSICOP Fellow since Skeptical Inquirer vol. 9, no. 3, Spring 1985.) "Oh, like everyone else, I used to parrot, and on occasion, still do." -- Al Seckel (interview with Jeffrey Epstein) Corrected 22 July 2015--original mistakenly said Maxwell was Australian. Update 22 September 2015--an obituary has been published for Al Seckel, stating that he died in France on an unspecified date earlier this year, but there are as yet no online French death records nor French news stories reporting his death. The obituary largely mirrors content put up on alseckel.net, a domain that was registered on September 18 by a user using Perfect Privacy LLC (domaindiscreet.com) to hide their information. (That in itself is not suspicious, it is generally a good practice for individuals who own domain names to protect their privacy with such mechanisms and I do it myself.) Update 24 September 2015: French police, via the U.S. consulate, confirmed the death of Al Seckel on July 1, 2015. His body was found at the bottom of a cliff in the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Update 21 December 2015: A timeline of Al Seckel's activities may be found here. Update 14 April 2022: Al Seckel's death has been declared a suicide. Update 19 November 2025: Robert Sheaffer's recollections of Al Seckel including being plagiarized by him as noted above can be found here. Geoff Coupe (2015-07-22): Robert Maxwell, while deceased, was not Australian - he was born in Czechoslovakia and became British. I think you are confusing him with another R. M. - Rupert Murdoch ...

Below these two videos is a post I made (perhaps to the Kate Bush fans’ “love-hounds” mailing list, I don’t recall) back in 1986 regarding a 1985 Christian “rock music seminar” about alleged Satanic backwards messages in rock music. I was familiar with the claims of supposed “backwards masking” where the sounds of ordinary lyrics were interpreted to have different messages when reversed, as well as actual examples of recordings that were put into songs in reverse. The former seemed to me to be examples of subjective validation, and I tested it myself by closing my eyes and covering my ears when the presenter gave their claims about what we were supposed to hear prior to playing the samples. Subsequently, this became one of the first tests the Phoenix Skeptics conducted as a student group at Arizona State University in October 1985. We invited the speaker to give his demonstrations before our group, but required him to play the samples first without explanation and have everyone write down what they heard. The result was that on the first pass, those unfamiliar with the samples had a wide variety of responses; on a second pass, once the expectation was set, everybody heard what they were supposed to hear. It’s interesting that this demonstration, the key example of which was a sample from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” made a comeback two decades later–being used by skeptics to show the power of suggestion and expectation, as these two videos from Simon Singh and Michael Shermer demonstrate. Simon Singh, 2006: ...

It has now been demonstrated, as no surprise to skeptics, that Rom Houben was not communicating via facilitated communication, a discredited method by which facilitators have typed for autistic children. A proper test was conducted by Dr. Steven Laureys with the help of the Belgian Skeptics, and it was found that the communications were coming from the facilitator, not from Houben. A blogger who was a vociferous critic of James Randi and Arthur Caplan for pointing out that facilitated communication is a bogus technique and who had attempted to use Houben’s case to argue that Terri Schiavo also may have been conscious is not only unwilling to admit he was wrong, but is deleting comments that point to the results of this new test. I had posted a comment along the lines of “Dr. Laureys performed additional tests with Houben and the facilitator and found that, in fact, the communications were coming from the facilitator, not Houben” with a link to the Neurologica blog; this blogger called that “spam” (on the basis of my posting a similar comment on another blog, perhaps) and “highly misleading” (on the basis of nothing). As I’ve said all along, this doesn’t mean that Houben isn’t “locked in” and conscious, but facilitated communication provides no evidence that he is. (Previously, previously.) ...

Vocab has put up the fifth and final part of his essay on abortion and personhood up at his blog, devoted to Thomson’s violinist argument. I don’t really have much to say about it–we didn’t coordinate our posts in advance, and I’ve already discussed Thomson’s argument myself in my response to part 4. I disagree with Vocab’s claim that Thomson’s argument proves too much and would allow infanticide–her argument only addresses a physically dependent fetus. And, as I already pointed out in my prior response, the argument doesn’t prove as much as it purports to. The violinist case isn’t exactly analogous to pregnancy and abortion in a number of ways, and Vocab is right to point out the differences. I agree that if a pregnancy is allowed to go to term (as well as to some earlier point at which there is plausible evidence for personhood on my standard), then that entails at least tacit consent and a moral duty of care. I would still argue, however, that abortion would be legitimate beyond that point for medically justifiable reasons (e.g., endangered health and life of the mother). This position–like the current position of the courts, which I think is approximately correct despite being based on viability–points out that there are more than two polar opposite positions in this debate. In Vocab’s final part, he talks a bit about the work that he and his wife do in caring for foster children. I commend him for that work, which is all-too-rare among opponents of abortion. Thanks, Vocab, for the debate–and I still would like to hear a response from you in the comments on some of the issues that have been left hanging (e.g., in the comments on part 3). UPDATE: It would probably be better to end this discussion with a summary that I already made in the comments on part 3: We don’t disagree that there is continuity of organism (just as there is continuity of a population of organisms over time)–all life on this planet is connected in that way. But just as we don’t count every species as human, even in our own genetic lineage, we don’t count every life stage of individual human organisms as persons. There’s a sense in which “I” was once a zygote that had my same DNA, but at that stage there was no “me” there yet–there was nothing that it was like to be a zygote, to use Thomas Nagel’s expression. In that same sense that “I” was a zygote, “I” will be a dead body in the future, even though there will at that point be nothing that it is like to be me, and the person that I am will be gone from the world though my body will briefly remain. I think we understand each other’s positions. You think that being a human organism is the same thing as to be a person, while I think personhood is a feature that comes into existence and persists for a subset of the life of an organism, that requires capacities of sentience or self-awareness. But I think I can give reasons to support why my view makes moral, legal, and practical sense, and why human cultures and practices are more consistent with my view than yours. I don’t think you can give such reasons, other than the brute assertion that human organisms are persons from start to finish. Your view has no need of the notion of person, yet it seems to me that there are all sorts of practical, moral, and legal reasons why we do need and use such a notion. ...

Vocab Malone has posted the fourth part of his essay on abortion and personhood, addressing the arguments from viability and wantedness. These are two more arguments that I don’t place a whole lot of stock in, though perhaps some commenters will want to say more about. The viability criterion is significant in that it’s the basis of current federal case law on abortion since Roe v. Wade, but Vocab correctly notes that viability changes with the availability of technology, and that doesn’t seem like a feature that should be relevant to whether one is a person. On the other hand, it is relevant to the notion of dependence–pre-viability is a time where, if you do grant that a fetus is a person, it’s a person that is dependent for its existence upon another person. This raises questions of when it is morally permissible for a person upon whom another is dependent for their life to sever that dependence. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s argument on abortion, which I referred to earlier in my response to part 1 of Vocab’s essay, presents the following scenario: ...

Vocab Malone has posted the third part of his argument against abortion at his blog, focusing on what he calls “the argument from size.” As I don’t think there’s any plausibility to this argument, I won’t spend any time with it, but there are still a few things in his post that I think demand response. The first is the assertion Vocab quotes from “prolific pro-life trainer and speaker Scott Klusendorf” that he always encounters this argument when he speaks at Christian schools. I find this assertion very difficult to believe–I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this argument anywhere, and I suspect that Klusendorf is either intentionally or unintentionally misconstruing some other argument as this argument. (Would he consider Randy Newman’s song, “Short People,” to be an instance of the argument, given its lyric, “short people got no reason to live”?) The instance of the argument Vocab suggests is nothing of the sort, though at least he admits that it is an argument about another subject. Here’s the quote as Vocab presents it: From the other end of things, a recent New York Times article featured a similar argument (although his piece was on a broader topic than abortion): Look at your loved ones. Do you see a hunk of cells or do you see something else? … We do not see cells, simple or complex – we see people, human life. That thing in a petri dish is something else. [2]The quote is from a New York Times editorial by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga about the difference between reproductive and therapeutic cloning. Here’s the quotation in context; it’s the ending of the piece: ...

Vocab Malone has posted a second set of arguments, addressing more directly the argument that some sort of capacity for sentience is a proper criterion for personhood. He begins with a few quotations, none of which address the question of personhood. The first, from Millard Erickson, says that abortion involves “the taking of a human life.” That’s correct. The second, from Jerome Lejeune, says that abortion “kills a member of our species.” That’s also correct. The third, from R.C. Sproul, says, “abortion-on-demand is evil, no one has the moral right to choose it. If it is an offense against life, the government must not permit it.” This doesn’t actually follow, if one thinks that it is possible to morally use lethal force in self-defense, in war time, and as a form of legal punishment. As it happens, Sproul does think that it is legitimate for governments to engage in just war and capital punishment. I’m not certain how he reconciles his views on those topics with the quoted statement, but I suspect he says that these forms of taking human life do not constitute “an offense against life” and are not evil. Vocab gives four arguments that he says he’s seen used to argue for the moral legitimacy of abortion: Sentience makes a person and the unborn are not sentientSize makes a person and the unborn are too smallViability makes a person and the unborn are not viable on their ownWantedness makes a person and the unborn are not wanted#1 is essentially my position. #3 is close to the U.S. Supreme Court’s position, but I don’t think it’s quite accurate. #2 and #4 strike me as completely implausible. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may not prohibit abortion for any reason prior to viability, the time at which a fetus can survive on its own independently of the mother (including with artificial assistance), or after viability when abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother. The point of viability is something that has shifted as technology has improved, and could potentially become completely meaningless, so I don’t see it as a plausible ethical criterion. So what does Vocab think is wrong with #1? He writes: “A component of this argument is it implies the pro-life position is weak because abortion is not cruel because the fetus cannot feel pain. Does this mean if I am unconscious or sleeping, I have lost my personhood?" This response misconstrues my position. Sentience is significant not just because it involves the possibility of actual perceptions at a given time, but because it allows for the sort of being that can have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. The absence of such a capacity entails that a being cannot have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests. This doesn’t mean we cease to have those things when we are temporarily unconscious. When I sleep, I may not be conscious of the external world (though I sometimes do perceive external stimuli in lucid dreams), but I still have the capacity for such conscious awareness, and continue to maintain beliefs, desires, intentions and have interests. A better objection to my position would be a case where I sustain some kind of brain damage which puts me into a persistent vegetative state, yet there is still some possibility of recovery. In my opinion, the only way I would have some possibility of recovery and be the same person would be if I continued to have beliefs, desires, and intentions represented in my brain even in the persistent vegetative state. If those were all lost, and biological recovery were still possible–say, through some therapy made possibly by embryonic stem cells transplanted into my brain, which ironically, Vocab’s view would likely make unethical–the person who would then come into being would be starting over afresh as a new person. Vocab quotes Scott Rae observing that a person who has their legs cut off is harmed even if they feel no pain in the process, and even if their legs are not useful for locomotion. That is no objection to my position–I agree that there is harm there, because it is done to a person in conflict with their beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, without their consent. Next, Vocab says that a fetus is “sensitive to touch at ten weeks and eleven weeks” and “most certainly does feel pain” by the third month. I believe it is a mistake to conflate “sensitive to touch” with “experiences sensations.” Reflexive actions don’t identify experiences. Further, I haven’t identified the ability to experience sensations with personhood, since I’ve already observed that animals can experience pain, but don’t think that necessarily entails the immorality of killing animals for food or other reasons (though I do think it probably entails a moral requirement for humane treatment). Vocab goes on to complain that a “developmental view, in which the basic thesis is humans become persons by some ability they acquire and not by the kind of entity they already are” is rarely “defend[ed] … with any rigor” and asks “Who says they get to lay out the qualification for personhood?” Regarding the first point, Vocab’s view is also one which attributes a right to life at a particular point, when two living haploid cells, a sperm and an egg, meet. He’s defended this by reference to two features, (1) that at this point there is a complete set of DNA and (2) left to itself, it will (if all goes well) develop into what we all would agree is a human being. (1) is clearly insufficient, since any somatic cell sloughed off a person’s skin has that property as well, and (2) only carries any persuasive weight from its appeal to future status rather than present. His subsequent question seems to assume that arguments for a view of personhood are dependent upon a claim to authority or power, rather than for their own intuitive force–and I think that’s just mistaken. He then asks, “Shouldn’t a civilized and ethical society desire to err on the side of life?” In the way this is written, I can’t agree–for the cycle of life requires death. I do agree that we should err on the side of protecting persons and treating humanely creatures that can experience pain, but that gives no reason to think the boundary line is where Vocab draws it. He writes that “It is an artificial and arbitrary distinction with no scientific grounding. One more reason the human/person distinction is artificial is because I have never met a person who is not a human, nor have I ever met a human who is not a person. Is this even possible?” I disagree completely with this description. The question of sentient capacities is one with very strong scientific grounding, though we are uncertain of exactly where the boundary is. The fact that Vocab only recognizes humans as a clear-cut case of persons on earth today just shows that he isn’t taking seriously the ideas that some other contemporary species (such as chimpanzees, dolphins, and whales) might meet reasonable criteria of personhood, some past species (Neandertal) probably did meet reasonable criteria of personhood, and extraterrestrial intelligent life might meet reasonable criteria of personhood. Suppose for a moment that we found out that a subset of human beings turned out to be a different species, incapable of interbreeding with the rest of us. It’s a consequence of Vocab’s view that this subset would not be persons. My intuition is completely to the contrary–creatures that are like us to the extent that they have beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests are persons, regardless of their biological makeup. Vocab’s final argument is his strongest, which is that my view has the potential consequence that some forms of infanticide and euthanasia–namely, those in cases where the conditions for personhood are not met–may be ethical. This is correct, presuming that personhood is the only justification for not permitting killing. I suggest that there are at least two other possibilities. One is just a recognition of the epistemic limits of determining personhood–that is, I believe, a reason for erring on the side of caution, and setting legal limits outside the boundaries of personhood. Another is a consequentialist argument about public policy considerations, which also argues for erring on the side of caution. While policies of permissible infanticide have been not been uncommon in history, they raise possibilities for brutalization or desensitization of the killer, among other negative consequences that go beyond the immediate act. This is itself a possible argument against abortions of fetuses that have recognizable human form. Early on in this post, Vocab wrote “It’s not as if there is a strong consensus, anyway.” On the contrary, I think there is virtually no support for Vocab’s view in history, from religion, from philosophy, or from science. In the United States, complete bans on abortion only became common after the Civil War, with the first post-quickening abortion prohibitions starting earlier, in the 1820s. I don’t think Vocab has come anywhere near making his case. He’s not addressed many of the points I brought up in my prior post, and though he cited Judith Jarvis Thomson, he hasn’t addressed the case of a conflict between two rights-holders, where one is dependent upon the other, which her violinist example brings up in an argument for the moral permissibility of abortion even if the fetus is counted as a person. Nor has he addressed the harm to non-actualized twins, or the case of cloned human beings who might develop without the process of fertilization (though I suspect he would identify them as persons at either the point of nuclear transfer or electric shock, and would probably have some reason for calling the process itself unethical). His view entails that IUDs, morning-after pills, in vitro fertilization, and embryonic stem cell research are immoral. His view suggests that if a building containing frozen embryos and small children were on fire, one should not give any preference to rescuing the children over the embryos. His view entails that a particular genetic makeup, rather than features like having beliefs, desires, intentions, and interests, is what’s relevant to personhood. His view doesn’t make sense of the idea of non-human persons. I see no plausibility to the idea that fertilization is a morally relevant event or that having a particular genetic makeup is the morally important part of being a person. UPDATE (December 14, 2009): Corrected sentence about U.S. abortion laws and added reference link to Wikipedia. UPDATE: It should be noted that Vocab misconstrues Peter Singer’s position on the relative worth of humans and animals; Singer speaks for himself on the subject on an episode of the Ethics Bites podcast: ...

Vocab Malone has put up his first post arguing for the position that “the unborn human embryo is a full person at the moment of conception and should be afforded the full rights due human beings by their very essence." Criteria of Personhood or Humanity He starts by looking at the question of what it is to be human or to be a person, citing a few historical references of individual characteristics–being rational, being “in relationship,” and “the capacity for self-objectification.” He expresses doubt that any single characteristic is appropriate, on the grounds that human beings undergo changes of state such as being asleep or being drugged, or not thinking. I agree with him that the characteristics he has listed won’t do the trick, and I also agree with him that features that go away when we sleep are inadequate. But it doesn’t follow that there is no single feature that can do the trick–if the feature is a capacity that we have, for example, that capacity doesn’t cease to exist when it’s not being used. He goes on to note that lack of personhood doesn’t entail that any treatment is morally permissible, pointing out animals as examples of nonpersons that deserve humane treatment. Again, I agree with him–and observe the converse, that possession of personhood doesn’t mean that there are no cases where it can be moral to kill a person–cases of self-defense, euthanasia, capital punishment, or war come to mind as possibilities. But what makes animals deserve humane treatment is that they have certain capacities and interests, such as an inner mental life that includes at the very least the ability to feel sensations–and note that humane treatment doesn’t necessarily entail a right to life on the part of an animal, or a duty on our part not to kill them. Vocab appears to want to lay the groundwork for rejecting the use of a criterion of personhood in favor of a criterion of humanity as his standard for arguing against abortion, but here he only offers a promissory note and doesn’t provide an argument to that effect. I think this is a mistake, however, because ethical distinctions should be based on morally relevant features, and I don’t believe species membership is any more relevant in and of itself to being the holder of rights or of being the object of duties than is race or gender. If a member of an intelligent alien species capable of language were to make contact with us, my intuition is that we would attribute personhood to that entity and give it the same consideration as a human being. Likewise if we manage to build artificially intelligent, self-directed machines with beliefs, desires, and intentions, though the intuition is not as strong there unless I imagine them to have mental lives similar to our own. Conception: Fertilization Even though Vocab hasn’t yet given a reason to reject a personhood criterion in favor of a human being criterion, the rest of his case is solely about human life rather than personhood, which I think is the wrong issue for the reasons I just gave. He argues that human life begins at conception, and clarifies that he means fertilization rather than implantation. This choice means that 30-50% of human lives are spontaneously aborted due to the failure of the fertilized ova to implant in the uterine wall. If Vocab thinks that this loss of human life is the loss of beings with rights and interests to whom we owe a duty to enable them to live out normal lives, then he has some explaining to do. First of all, why would a loving God create a human reproductive system that resulted in such a Holocaust of lives lost before they get a chance to start? Second, why has no one considered this to be a serious ethical problem that we need to urgently devote medical resources to address? We can call this the problem of natural abortion, which has both a natural evil and human evil component that requires justification. Complete at Fertilization? Vocab says that at conception (by which he means fertilization), “every human is complete and alive.” I agree that a fertilized human ovum is alive–as life is a continuous process, arising from living components, at least until synthetic biology gets to the point of creating life from entirely nonliving components. Sperm and ova are also alive. But it is certainly not complete–zygotes have no brains, no central nervous systems, no organs, no body parts other than undifferentiated, identical cells. An Individual at Fertilization? Vocab also says that at fertilization and pre-implantation, “it is not merely a collection of cells lumped together but an actual individual.” This also need not be the case. At fertilization, a zygote is an undifferentiated cell that undergoes a process of division without changing size for several days, to become a blastocyst by about the fifth day. During this period each of its cells is totipotent, meaning that each individual cell has the potential to become a full human being. Sometimes more than one of the cells does become a separate human being, as in the case of identical twins. In the case of identical twins, if they don’t split completely, they may become conjoined twins or parasitic twins, or one twin may be completely absorbed into the other or otherwise fail to develop and become a vanishing twin. Where a vanishing twin occurs with fraternal twins, the resulting individual can be a chimera, with two sets of DNA. Should we also grieve for those twins who fail to develop, either due to failure to split off or failure to develop? The science fiction scenarios of teleportation that create interesting philosophical puzzles for the notion of personal identity are real puzzles for a view that attributes personhood to zygotes, though without the additional problem of memories and experiences, since zygotes are undifferentiated cells. Blastocysts Once the zygote becomes a blastocyst, it forms into an outer layer of cells, which later becomes the placenta, and an inner cell mass of pluripotent embryonic stem cells, each of which is capable of differentiating into any kind of human cell. Only after this stage does the blastocyst implant in the wall of the uterus, about a week after fertilization, and begin taking nutrients directly from the blood of the mother–a dependency that can itself be of moral significance, as Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument shows. As already mentioned above, a great many fertilized ova do not reach this stage. Further, the percentages of implant failure are higher for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a procedure which Vocab’s criteria would have to declare unethical, even though it is the only way that many couples can have their own biological offspring. It should also be noted that the process of therapeutic cloning involves taking a female ovum (which Vocab doesn’t seem to indicate he considers to be a bearer of rights on its own), removing its haploid DNA, inserting the nucleus from a (diploid) human somatic cell (this is called somatic cell nuclear transfer), and giving it a shock to cause it to start dividing just like a fertilized egg. This occurs without fertilization by a human sperm. Once it reaches the blastocyst stage, its inner cell mass is harvested for embryonic stem cells, which destroys the blastocyst in the process. The natural process of fertilization never takes place, but there’s little doubt that reproductive human cloning is possible via this process. Vocab’s choice of fertilization as key suggests that there is no moral issue with this process, even though it also has some potential to become a human being. Further, if fertilization is a necessary, not just a sufficient, condition for rights, Vocab’s view suggests that human clones would have no rights. Fully Programmed? Vocab goes on to say that “the embryo is already ‘fully programmed’ (to use computer language). This means the pre-implanted embryo needs no more information input at any further point in its development.” While this was formerly believed to be the case about the individual embryo’s biology, we now know that the environment of development can play a role in the characteristics that will come to be exhibited, such as from mRNA supplied from the mother to a developing embryo after fertilization and prior to zygote formation. But in any case, I would maintain that it’s not our cellular biology that gives us moral value, as opposed to our capacities to have interests, desires, intentions, plans, sensations, and so forth–all capacities that zygotes lack. Vocab ends this piece with some anthropomorphizing of zygotes, which appears to me to be a highly misleading form of argument–his analogies cannot be taken literally, since zygotes have no mental processes. Human and Living = Human Being? I agree with Vocab that a fertilized human ovum is living, that it’s human, and that, if all goes well, it will become one (or more) individual human beings. I don’t agree that it’s yet a person or a “human being,” since it lacks the requisite parts and capacities. To sum up: ...

Local Christian hip-hop artist and slam poet Vocab Malone, who I’ve interacted with online and met when Daniel Dennett spoke at ASU early this year, asked me in January for my thoughts on abortion and personhood. He’s now written a paper on the subject which he’s asked me to critique, and we thought it would be interesting to see how it would work out to do it in a public manner via our respective blogs. The plan is that he will post successive sections of his paper on his blog, and I’ll respond here, with cross-links to share some traffic and discussion. Both of us allow blog comments; it probably makes the most sense to post your comments at the blog for the person you’d like to see a response from. Vocab has posted an introduction and the comments that I originally sent to him on the subject at his blog, Backpack Apologetics. He’s taking a position that I think is very difficult to justify, that full personhood and human rights are acquired at the moment of conception–we’ll have to see which definition of conception he chooses, fertilization or implantation. Just to throw out a little issue I raised this semester in one of my classes–some have argued that climate change raises the ethical issue of a duty to future generations. If we can have moral duties now to people who don’t exist at all yet, what does that imply about duties to embryos? ...

I’ve posted comments about the reasons to be skeptical about Rom Houben’s facilitated communication at a number of blogs, where the response of some seems to be that there is no point of such testing. The reasons for not testing have included (1) that the videos are a “straw man”; (2) that criticisms from a stage magician and a philosopher/bioethicist are not worthy of attention; and (3) the testimony from Dr. Laureys, the facilitator Mrs. Wouters, and Houben’s family is much stronger evidence than what we can see in the videos, and that Dr. Laureys says he already conducted a single-blind test which showed that the communication came from Houben, not the facilitator, and to reject that is irrational hyper-skepticism that assumes they are lying. The first argument makes no sense to me. The videos clearly show the facilitator rapidly typing away with Houben’s finger even while he’s looking away or has his eyes closed, which is by itself a very strong reason to be skeptical, especially in light of the past record of facilitated communication. The second argument is not only ad hominem, but further refuted by similar analysis by a neuroscientist. The last argument is a bit better, but wrongly assumes that the only alternative is that the doctor and family are lying. Facilitated communication isn’t a matter of conscious fraud, it’s a matter of self-deception of the facilitator (enhanced by the expectations and reactions of the family). Given the possibility of unconscious cuing of the facilitator by the doctor, as well as his own vested interest in a positive result, the test he described doing is still far from sufficient to overcome the evidence plainly displayed in the videos. Unfortunately, there is a very strong incentive to believe on the part of the doctor, the facilitator, and the family. To find that the communications are coming from the facilitator would be emotionally devastating, and detrimental to the doctor’s credibility. To test further is to risk a huge potential loss of what has apparently been gained, and I suspect it’s unlikely that we’ll see it happen. But look at it from Houben’s own perspective–further testing is absolutely in his own best interests. For if the facilitator is the one doing the communicating, not him, then he is being further exploited for the satisfaction of his doctor, facilitator, and family, not for his own benefit. He’s not being treated respectfully or as an end, rather than as a means. If he is, in fact, minimally conscious as the brain scans suggest, then speaking on his behalf without his genuine input is doing him even greater harm. If you reject the idea that an hour or so of Houben’s time should be used to do a conclusive, double-blind test to see whether the communications are coming from him or from the facilitator, is it because you want to believe, rather than to know? There is clear possible harm to Hoeben from not doing such a test. There is no harm to Hoeben from such a test, though there’s clearly the risk of painfully dissolving an illusion for the doctor, facilitator, and family. But Hoeben’s interests should be placed above that risk. (Previously on Houben, a post with many links and references.) UPDATE (February 15, 2010): Houben has been put to the test, and it turns out the communications were, in fact, coming from the facilitator. UPDATE (February 20, 2010): David Gorski at the Science-Based Medicine blog has a bit more from the Belgian Skeptics, who were involved in the test. ...