Some Lifelines Can Kill

It was a hot day in Chicago, July hot, beach hot, and on TV, President Bush was vetoing the embryonic stem-cell research bill, arguing that it is immoral to use life to save life.

Journalists dismissed this as politics. And Democrat and Republican politicians, adept at measuring political winds, argued that adult lives were being lost because human embryos weren't being used to find cures for adult disease.

Outside, like I said, it was hot. And I thought about another hot day, almost 40 years ago, the day my father almost drowned in a quarry.

Then I remember my father, desperate to keep us away from him in the deep water, where he might reach out for us and pull us down with him at the end. He knew life was capable of anything to survive. That's what he'd been terrified of. Not of drowning himself, as much as what he might have done to his young in panic.

Yet now, as a culture, we're not afraid of that, are we? We wait for the president to move on, waiting for modern scientific reason to eventually triumph over the old morality.

But we should worry about the psychic cost of it, as we grow older, facing death and disease, as we grow desperate, reaching for those embryos to keep us from drowning, and by scientific proxy, devour the life inside them to sustain our own.

If you told me your neighbor had a baby, I'd tell you that it's irrelevant because even among cultures where infanticide was widespread, they never killed all of their children.

First... sorry for assuming this was a quantity argument. But even among cultures where auto theft is frowned upon, cars are sometimes still stolen... and there are those that rationalize the actions of the theives. The existence of one thief and the fact that his theft wasn't front-page news isn't necessarily evidence that society at large isn't opposed to auto theft (or is less opposed than it should be or is on its way towards accepting auto theft as moral).

Your correct response would have been to point out that it's being investigated and, if it were infanticide, they might be arrested for killing a baby. That shows that the official legal position still frowns on infanticide.

My "correct" response? Correct how? In my mind the official legal position is secondary to society's position. (In India the official legal position still frowns on infanticide but it's still a problem, right?)

I've already given you an example of legal infanticide, as understood by a majority of Americans in polls -- partial-birth abortion. Why isn't it illegal and why aren't people more outraged over it?

Partial-birth abortion is illegal in at least 23 states. As for why it's not against federal law, if I remember correctly the major debate was that it didn't allow for a life-of-the-mother exception. I personally believe the federal law failed because politicians are ill-equiped to argue what makes good medicine. It's likely that state laws failed for similar reasons, though I can't comment on each state specifically.

Personally, I'm glad it failed. I believe every state should ban all abortions (except where the mother's life is in danger -- then it's a sad case of self-defense) but I don't think it should be against federal law. I just don't see which of the enumerated powers should be interpreted to allow the federal government authority to pass such a law. A lot of people ARE outraged. As for why more people aren't -- everyone picks his battles. It simply takes too much energy to be outraged at everything evil.

First, most persuasive discussions between people either on the Internet or in person don't follow formal rules of logic and proof. All I need to do is make a case that the person I'm talking to finds persuasive.

You stated that you could make a slippery slope argument sound by showing that you can't stand still. "Can't"... that was your term. I agreed with you (why? because there is one issue in particular where I find the slippery slope argument persuasive and actually use it... but that's only because I have read the study that suggests a -causal link- between the first step and the bottom of the slope). If you could show that one "can't" stand still then your argument would be persuasive. But to prove "can't" you have to follow formal rules of logic and proof (though I left the possibility of going from "can't" to "unlikely to" with a few of my questions). You've done neither. Perhaps there is another way to make the slippery slope argument persuasive. I haven't seen it.

The problem with these debates is that there is no firm place to stand in the middle and the only two stable places are at the end, too far apart to allow for a gentle sway between the two.

What about you can only kill an embryo if it was going to die anyways? That's where most pro-lifers put the line... every single one of these embryos, through accident or design, is going to thaw and die without ever getting a chance to be born... regardless of whether they'll be used for research or not.

Despite how logically questionable slippery slope arguments are, in the real world, they change minds all the time.

I've seen it used but I've never seen it work. I suspect it happens more often than never but less often than "all the time"... But how often it happens isn't really the issue so much as "is there a better way?" I think there is.

FR is a great community, but in many respects is little more than an echo chamber. I see them batted around on, for example, abortion threads where everyone agrees that they're persuasive (I believe because they all already agreed that abortion is wrong before the thread was posted)... but on subjects where FReepers tend to disagree (for example on Schiavo and crevo threads) they're quickly dismissed by the opponents.

Often, they're dismissed by pointing out how bad things would be if we slipped the OTHER way... a quality which makes slippery slope arguments uniquely vulnerable.

Some FReeper will exclaim "If we start teaching ID pretty soon we'll have to teach flat-earth theory!" which is quickly followed by something along the lines of "Darwinism caused eugenics... if 'evilutionists' are left unchecked what will it cause next?"

Now... the fact that I've never seen a slippery slope argument work might just be evidence that I'm looking in the wrong places. But I still think there's a better way.

The problem with that argument is that it's not "unnecessary".

Geez... talk about arguing just to argue. The loss of life is unnecessary because the research is unnecessary.

It's not an equivalent issue in the case of stem-cell research because you can always ask Grandma. And, at the point where Grandma is so brain dead that she can't be asked and has no chance of recovery, well, we do allow her to be cut up for her organs.

In my example, Grandma was in a coma but not brain dead. Granted it's still not perfect. As you said, no analogy is. Always looking for better ones. In your 'missing organs' analogy do you change the date of the execution to match up with a patient's surgery? 'Cause if not, I wouldnt have a problem with it (how many deaths actually are just?).

An important thing to remember is that convincing the other person that you are right and they are wrong isn't the most important part of an Internet debate. Convincing the lurkers that you are sane and your opponent is crazy is the objective.

I'm neither trying to convince you that I'm right nor am I trying convince anyone lurking that you're crazy. Neither of those goals seems worth fighting for... especially not on a forum like FR. My purpose here is similar to why military forces use wargaming. We're on the same side of this debate, but exploring the weaknesses in each other's arguments here in the company of friends is a great way to prepare for debates that occur 'out there'.

If indeed a slippery slope argument IS the most effective way to change hearts and minds then I want to learn WHY it's so effective (and in particular why it's more effective than what I use) and how we can take advantage of that. If it's not... what other persuasive arguments can be used and what are the weaknesses of those? In that way I guess you could say I am arguing (here) just to argue (out there).

A lot of this is going round and round on minor points that I really don't have the time to go round and round on right now, so I'm going to focus on two points that I think are useful...

The analogy I toss back, in that example, is the case of using organs from executed political prisoners in China for transplants. This illustrates the three problems that using frozen embryos that would "die anyway" causes for someone who is pro-life.

First, it's gaining from the illegitimate death of another (another example I give is the fact that Americans let Japanese scientists from Unit 731, who vivisected and murdered plenty of prisoners in biological experiments, off the hook in order to get their research -- was that a good choice?). For many people, this will viscerally seem wrong (see my point on human moral decision making and the slippery slope below). Personally, this one is good enough for me, but it may be wear the Congressional pro-lifers fall down. That's where I'd pull out the Chinese political prisoner's organs being used for transplant (because they are going to "die anyway") and the Unit 731 trade-off (because their victims were "dead already").

Second, the success and acceptance of doing so can actually encourage more illegitimate deaths. In the case of the Chinese political prisoners, the Chinese charge for the organs and thus get a financial benefit from killing more political prisoners. "But there are thousands and thousands of unwanted embryos from IVF!" one might protest, thinking that we'll never need to make more. Not necessarily true. It's not unreasonable to think that stem-cell research successes could very likely have compatibility issues like those found in bone marrow (a form of stem cell) transplants and other transplant technologies. What will happen if the end result of fetal stem-cell research is that it encourages parents to conceive and abort new children to save their born children? If they argue that's unlikely, then I'd point out bone marrow transplant compatibility tests.

Third, and perhaps the strongest argument (and why I think the pro-abortion camp supports fetal stem-cell research as well as morning after pills, etc.) is that the objective of the pro-life movement is supposed to be the end of the destruction of embryos and fetuses. If that objective is ever achieved (including forcing the more careful practice of IVF to reduce or eliminate the presence of unwanted or unused embryos), then the pool of victims for fetal stem-cell research will dry up. Because of that, the utility and (if successful) medical reliance on the destruction of embryos for stem-cell research and treatments creates an incentive for people to fight against the ultimate objectives of the pro-life side. In other words, if it ever comes down to that last few swing votes needed to ban abortion and the destruction of unwanted embryos, the swing votes might be swayed to allow the destruction to continue, just as the pro-life congress critters are persuaded to allow stem-cell research, based on how useful they are to destroy and the room fool of teary people helped at the expense of murdered embryos. If that doesn't persuade them, then I doubt their commitment to the end-game of the pro-life position, which includes not only an end to abortion but an end to the casual destruction of embryos in the way IVF is currently (but doesn't have to be) practiced that provides the hoards of embryos that will "die anyway" for this research.

As for when slippery slopes work, I think you should read this article. I can provide peer reviewed scientific articles of the issues discussed if you really want. The gist is that humans make moral decisions based on a combination of utility and empathy. The successful use of a slippery slope relies on appeals to empathy -- by making the undesirable end seem closer and more intimate -- than a distant impossibility. That's why humans naturally use slippery slopes and analogies because they are trying to express the visceral component of their moral decision. When a slippery slope (or analogy) works, it often works by getting the person to think about the issue in a way they haven't thought of it before, ideally in a way that triggers a closer connection and empathy to the subject in question. That can tilt the moral calculus. The purpose of quasi-utilitarian arguments is to lessen the force of the utilitarian component to object, thus giving the empathic component stronger sway.

And I saying that opposition to abortion is largely a matter of empathy and not utility? To a large degree, yes. Pure utilitarianism is bad news and much of what makes us human and oppose things like murder, rape, slavery, etc. is empathy rather than utility, and that's not a bad thing. A lack of empathy and cold utilitarian approach to others it he hallmark of a psychopath and nature or God gave us this dual-track moral decision making mind because it works better than the alternatives (pure utilitarianism or pure empathy). And the purpose of utilitarian arguments (including, in many ways, the slippery slope argument) is not necessarily to produce a bulletproof utilitarian argument but to make an argument that is good enough to satisfy the utilitarian component of the decision-making process so that a person can listen to the empathy component, which almost always favors the pro-life side once you can get the person to consider the embryo to be a person (I've encountered a few, but only a few, pure utilitarian folks willing to admit, "Yeah, it's a baby, but I think the woman should be able to abort it, anyway, because it's her body," people).

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