Shades Of Reality

Chapter Eleven

Even having read through this much of the book, a dyed-in-the-wool pragmatic Aristotelian might still say, "So what! All of this business about smoothing out step functions and creating Realistic laws is all just a lot of humbug! So what, if we draw the line at 18 as the minimum voting age? So what, if our laws violate your silly Prime Directive of Equality? Who cares? The way we currently do things in this country is just fine, because it all works. And if something works, don't fix it!"

Well, we are now going to discuss a topic for which the current Aristotelian way of thinking does not "work just fine." It's an issue that the "draw-the-line" mentality does not resolve at all. I am referring to the subject of abortion.

It may be easy to dismiss questions about what time the sky gets dark as being frivolous and unimportant. And it may be only of academic interest that a lightbulb requires a small but finite amount of time to turn on. In these instances, we can just ignore the truth and, for all practical purposes, simply pretend that they happen instantaneously. We can pretend because such simplifications do not have any profound life-or-death consequences.

But when it comes to pregnancy, we can no longer ignore reality. We cannot make reality "easier" by simply "pretending" that a fully-grown person suddenly "pops out" of a woman's body at the instant of conception. There is no denying that pregnancy is a prolonged period of time lasting many months. And there just isn't any way that we can make this fact conveniently "go away."

The abortion issue therefore stands full square in the face of the bivalent mentality and challenges it for a solution. And none is forthcoming -- because the Aristotelian framework is the wrong paradigm in which to look for a solution. One cannot be expected to decide which of two possible answers to a question is the correct answer when both of those answers are wrong! One of the crowning achievements of fuzzy logic, therefore, may be that it finally presents the tools for resolving the abortion issue once and for all.

Before we begin applying fuzzy logic to the abortion issue, let me first preface my discussion with an important statement: I am completely neutral on the matter of abortion. I view the entire abortion issue as being merely an interesting intellectual exercise. And so I am able to approach the subject without any personal biases or hidden "agendas" as to what I would like the final outcome on the abortion matter to be.

Let's begin by looking at the main ideas currently expressed by the two existing dominant camps, the so-called "pro-lifers" and the so-called "pro-choicers."

The anti-abortion group likes to refer to itself as being "pro-life," whch presumably means "pro-all life." (If they had meant only human life, then they would have explicitly said "pro-human life." But they didn't. Therefore all life, both plant and animal, must be sacred to them.) This must leave them with quite an interesting delemma of trying to decide what to eat! I therefore prefer to refer to this group more properly as the "anti-abortion" group.

The anti-abortionists are of the frame of mind that a human being comes into existence at the "moment of conception." The reason for this belief stems from a sorites-type of argument. They reason: if a baby is a human being when it is born, then it must have also been a human being one minute before it was born, and then one minute before that, etc. Continuing this reasoning process backwards in time to the "point of conception," they can find no magical point in time at which anything of significance occurs to mark the start of being human. Since conception itself appears to be the only clear-cut "discontinuity" that they can identify, it must be (in the anti-abortionist opinion) at that time that the transition from non-human being to 100 percent human being is made, and at that time the "soul" enters the "person." (We will discuss the concepts of souls further when we get to Chapter Thirteen.)

(Figure 11.1 -- The Anti-abortionist's Paradigm)

However, as we know from the Smoothness Principle (see Chapter One), conception does not occur at a precise "point in time." How should one define the exact "moment" of conception? When the sperm first "touches" the egg? When it's halfway inside? What defines the last split second of time at which the egg could (in principle) be destroyed without it being called the killing of a baby? Anti-abortionists have a tough time dealing with these kinds of questions, and so they usually just brush them aside as being irrelevant. (A few years ago I hosted a debate at KSCO Radio on the abortion issue, and when I pressed the "pro-lifer" to discuss these issues, he threatened to walk out of the studio unless I changed the subject!)

Another argument advanced by anti-abortionists is that a fetus is to be considered as being a human being because if it is allowed to continue growing, it will eventually become one. The problem with this kind of argument is that it avoids focusing on the current reality. Someday the fetus might even grow up to adulthood and eventually die of old age. It should therefore be just as valid to argue that a fetus is presently a cadaver since, if it is allowed to continue growing, it would eventually become one!

The pro-abortion group likes to refer to itself as being "pro-choice." I too like to make choices -- I choose which clothes I will wear, at which restaurant I will eat lunch, etc. In fact, I would suspect that most anti-abortionists like to make these very same kinds of choices too! Therefore, even anti-abortionists are pro-"choice." Furthermore, everyone has the "choice" of whether or not they should become a shoplifter, for example. (They have the choice, providing they are also willing to accept the consequences!) But the issue at hand is not one of making choices. The issue at hand is abortion. Therefore, I prefer to refer to this group more properly as the "pro-abortion" group.

The pro-abortionists are of the frame of mind that a fetus doesn't become a human being until some future time (usually measured in terms of something called "trimesters"). At that point in time, some supposedly invisible and magical process instantly turns the fetus into a 100 percent human being. After that magical instant, it is no longer OK to have an abortion performed. (But one hour prior to the that moment, it apparently is OK!) The trouble is, none of the pro-abortionists can seem to agree on just what or when this magical event is. So they all just make up their own rules depending on what turns out to be convenient for themselves.

(Figure 11.2 -- The Pro-abortionist's Paradigm)

A common pro-abortionist defense of their position (especially when discussing their views with a male) is: "You're not the one who's pregnant, and so you're not qualified to comment on the subject!" Of course that kind of reasoning would imply that a botonist is not qualified to discuss the subject of plants, simply because she herself is not a plant!

And finally, pro-abortionists argue that "nobody has the right to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body." But if an object inside of a woman's body is to be regarded as being a part of her own body, then if a woman were to walk into a jewelry store and swallow a diamond ring, who would be the legal owner of that ring!?

(Actually, the claim that a fetus is a part of the woman's body may in reality be partially valid. I will return to this point shortly.)

"Gray" represents a color in which both "black" and "white" are each present to some degree. The less black in the mixture, the lighter the shade of gray. If no black whatsoever is present, then the shade of gray is called "100 percent white," (or just plain "white"). Since there is no more black that can be removed, this level of whiteness is as white as anything can get. (And there actually are substances, such as magnesium oxide, which come very close to being 100 percent white.) Therefore, "whiteness" is a concept which, in addition to being bounded, is nearly absolutely attainable in the real world.

But even though they rhyme and have functional similarities, it's important not to confuse "whiteness" with "brightness." Brightness is not something which is ever achievable or attainable in an absolute sense. Even the sun is not as bright as something can possibly be. In fact there is no object that you can point to and say, "This object is 100 percent bright." The term "brightness" (unlike "whiteness") is an unbounded concept. Any light can (at least in principle) become just a little bit brighter than it currently is.

The term, "human being" is very much like "brightness." Both represent unbounded concepts whose levels of existence can only be specified in terms of degrees. You cannot point to any living entity on this planet and say, "That is a 100 percent human being," any more than you can point to a light that is 100 percent bright. There is always room for "improvement" in both cases. And if mankind should continue to exist and develop for another million years, will it become more than human? Or might it turn out in retrospect that we, of today, will have been merely less than human?

We might be tempted to view present-day "human-ness" in comparative terms relative to some physical criterion. For example, we can specify to what degree an entity's DNA conforms to that of the species, homo sapiens. But if we try to use that as measure of "human-ness" then even a woman's unfertilized egg (or even a strand of her hair, or a drop of her blood) would qualify as being a "human being."

One of the problems with trying to perceive "human-ness" in terms of shades of gray is that, apart from relatively rare exceptions, most of us are fairly "normal," and therefore we have a kind of sameness to us. Except for petty individual differences, we all pretty much look and act and think like every other member of our species. We all have hopes, fears, joys, and sorrows. We all experience these kinds of emotions, which we feel make us "human." And so most of us probably cluster around a "human-ness level" near the 100 percent mark. (At least it would appear that way to us, not currently having any higher life forms to compare ourselves to.) And so there is the Aristotelian inclination to "round off" everybody and pretend that the slight differences in levels of "human-ness" from one person to another simply don't exist. In short, we equify ourselves.

Another problem with trying to understand the shades of gray of "human-ness" stems from our religious upbringings. Most religions are inherently Aristotelian in their dogmas. (God must have not known about fuzzy logic back then!) Consequently, we are led to believe that whenever you do something, either you have committed a sin or else you haven't sinned at all. Either you are a good person or else you are a bad person. Either you'll go to heaven when you die, or else you'll go to hell. And if you're a human being, then you are created in God's image. And if you are created in His image, then you are created in that image all-or-nothing.

But if something is only almost a human being, then in whose image is it created? Religion can't answer these kinds of questions about degrees of human-ness because religion never thought about them. To the bivalent religious mind, every person is simply a "human being," and everything else is not. Period. Case closed. (And mind closed, as well!)

We will return to the discussion of religion's perceptions of reality in Chapter Thirteen when we discuss the concepts of death, heaven, hell, and souls.

I will now define a third point of view for the abortion issue. The pro-reality view bases its analysis on the reality that an embryo gradually makes the transition from non-human to more nearly human over an extended period of time (many months). Therefore at any point in time it can be regarded as being both a human being (to some degree) and not a human being (to some degree), as shown in Figure 11.3.

(Figure 11.3 -- The Pro-reality Paradigm)

Using this "degree of human being" curve, we can now answer the question, "to what degree does an abortion constitute killing a human being?" The exact, answer of course, depends on how long after conception the abortion is performed. The later the abortion, the greater the degree of guilt of killing a human being. (The arguments are exactly the same as those that we developed in Chapter Nine when we discussed the example of the park trespasser.)

Of course, a human fetus is not exactly analogous to a butterfly cocoon. There are definite dissimularities between the two. For example, one of the obvious major differences is that a fetus lives inside a woman's body, whereas a cocoon does not. Therefore the pro-abortionists may have a somewhat legitimate argument when they claim that a fetus is actually a part of a woman's body, and as such, the woman has the right to deal with the matter privately.

However, even this claim is not completely true, nor is it completely false. At any particular point in time it is merely true to some degree. And the closer the baby gets to the time of its birth, the more it becomes its own separate entity apart from the woman's body.

The abortion issue can be resolved by taking all of the relevant factors into account. When all the different degrees of "this and that" become established, legimetricians will be able to construct a set of "abortion curves". These curves will indicate the level of "murder" for aborting a fetus at any particular point in the pregnancy. It is important to remember that these curves will not define any kind of "boundary line" between what should be considered "murder" and what shouldn't. And so a person involved in an abortion will not be simply either "guilty" or "not guilty" of murder, but a mixture of both. They will be only partially guilty.

(Figure 11.5)

As an example, the graph shown in the above figure represents my attempt at deriving a first-order approximation to the Realistic "abortion curve." (See the Appendix.) The curve is summarized in the following table:

  Weeks           Degree          Penalty
  Since             of           (Days in
Concept.          Murder          Prison)

    0          0.0 percent            0
    5          0.8 percent           31
   10          3.0 percent          111
   15          6.3 percent          229
   20         10.2 percent          371
   25         14.5 percent          530
   30         19.1 percent          700
   35         23.9 percent          873
   40         28.7 percent         1048
   45         33.5 percent         1221
   50         38.1 percent         1389
   60         46.7 percent         1706
   70         54.6 percent         1992
   80         61.5 percent         2245
   90         67.6 percent         2465
  100         72.7 percent         2654

The left-most column indicates the number of weeks that have elapsed since conception. The middle column indicates the degree to which a murder has been committed if an abortion occurs at that time. The right-most column indicates the recommended prison term for the abortion (based on an arbitrary ten year prison sentence for a person who is 100 percent guilty of killing another human being). For brevity I have indicated only about 15 values in the table. Intermediate points can be found either by interpolation, or by evaluating the equation given in the Appendix.

The guilts and corresponding penalties expressed in the above table are total values for an abortion at the specified time. So these values are to be divided among the individual participants. For example if an abortion is performed after 25 weeks of pregnancy, the 530 day total prison term for that abortion would probably be split (in accordance with the Conservation of Crime and Guilt, as discussed in Chapter Ten) into a 265 day sentence for the woman, and a 265 day sentence for the doctor who performed the abortion.

The above abortion curve does take into account the pro-abortionist claim that a fetus is a part of a woman's body. Consequently, the degrees of guilt and corresponding penalties are initially somewhat lower than they would have otherwise been. (Compare the initial "bend" in Figure 11.5 with the straight-line "ramp" shown in Figure 11.4)   However, the amount of this lowering diminishes as time passes (since the validity of the claim also diminishes with time).

Also notice that the degree of guilt does not reach 100 percent at birth (40 weeks). Instead the baby is still considered to be an incomplete human being even after it is born. For the next several years it will continue to develop into a more complete human being while it is outside of the womb. Consequently, the abortion curve extends past the normal 40 week gestation period in order to handle the possibility of post-natal "abortions."

Once again, the above table is only one suggestion for the abortion curve. You might want to try proposing your own curve. For example if you are having difficulty accepting the notion that a newborn baby is still not yet a complete human being, then you might prefer an abortion curve for which the degree of murder gradually reaches 100 percent by the time of birth. Or if you feel that the penalty for killing a complete human being should be more (or less) than ten years in prison, then you might want to adjust the values in the right-most column up (or down) appropriately.

Or if you are a "pro-choicer" who is still having difficulty dealing with the realities of abortion, you might feel more comfortable proposing a quasi-realistic abortion curve instead (similar to the quasi-realistic voting curve that we saw in Figure 9.4 when we discussed the issue of minimum voting age, or similar to the quasi-realistic speeding curve shown in Figure 9.5). Then you could allow for a kind of "grace period" for abortions (perhaps several weeks from the time of conception), during which time there would be no penalties assessed. After the grace period expired, the prison term assessed for performing an abortion would gradually ramp up from zero. This solution would also satisfy the Prime Directive of Equality. But you would still be faced with the problem of establishing (and justifying!) the exact duration of such a grace period.

I suspect that there will still be many readers who, because of their life-long indoctrination to the Aristotelian way of thinking, will look at the Realistic abortion curve (or any abortion curve) and come to the "bottom line" conclusion that abortion must therefore be illegal. Otherwise, why would there be any prison sentences involved?

Let me reiterate. Abortion is neither legal nor illegal, but a mixture of both. If it were totally illegal, the proposed prison terms for abortion would be much longer. The fact that they are as short as they are is an indication of the legality of abortion.

The pro-reality view regarding abortion does not coincide with either of the two currently popular views on the matter. (In fact, because the penalties are so lenient, the pro-lifers seem to regard pro-reality as siding with the pro-choice camp, while the pro-choicers feel just the opposite!) But correctness is not determined by popularity, but by consistency (see Chapter Zero). Therefore, the pro-reality view is the correct view because it is the only view that is consistent with reality. The other two views aren't consistent with much of anything (except perhaps wishful thinking).

Reality does not draw bivalent boundary lines between "day" and "night," or between "human being" and "non-human being." So rather than foolishly and ignorantly continuing to debate the exact moment at which "the sky becomes dark," let's begin to "see the light" instead. And having analyzed the matter in the light of fuzzy logic, we can now lay the abortion question to rest and (aside from a few quantitative aspects) regard it as being pretty much a dead issue (no pun intended).