Arguing about Abortion: The Conceptionalist’s Sleight of Hand

Few controversies generate the entertainment value produced by the vociferous debates between conceptionalists and non-conceptionalists. For the jargon averse: the conceptionalist holds the position that morally valuable life is instantiated at conception, and therefore the embryo is a morally dignified being of equal significance to the fully developed adult human. The contentious political consequence of this view is that elective abortion at any stage is at best a tragedy, and at worst a heinous offense.

My primary ambition here is not to present “the correct” position on abortion – or to show why conceptionalism is wrong. Instead, I’m going to expose the bizarre chicanery that the casual conceptionalist will often implement to disguise or ignore the shortcomings of their position.

Perhaps the honorary president of the “Conceptionalist School of Illusion” – Steven Crowder – is responsible for a supremely entertaining series of YouTube conversations called “Change My Mind”. These are short, impromptu, public debates that he films and publishes – usually from the campus of some American University. The topic of abortion has been the subject of conversation more than once.

The pattern in his argumentative style is one that can be found in virtually any discussion between a conceptionalist and a non-conceptionalist. If you haven’t seen the show, you are encouraged to spend a bit of time reviewing a segment or two. If you’re short on time, Ben Shapiro’s trademarked “Destroys” YouTube clips on the subject will probably suffice. The ubiquity of the pattern we’re about to dissect is difficult to overstate.

So, what is this pattern? The conceptionalist’s argument almost invariably proceeds via successive reductio ad absurdum. After the conceptionalist presents his position, his interlocutor will reject that position and propose an alternative. At this point, the witty conceptionalist takes the limiting principle offered by his opponent and re-purposes it to a hypothetical scenario where it apparently yields a perplexing, ethically counterintuitive result. This implication is meant to be the evidence against the interlocutor’s position.

It might go a bit like this:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conceptionalist: “‘Personhood’ begins at Conception.”

Interlocutor: “No it doesn’t.”

Conceptionalist: “When does morally valuable life begin then, according to you?”

Interlocutor: “I think that brain waves demarcate the presence and/or absence of morally valuable life.”

Conceptionalist: “So brain waves are required for a human life-form to be a moral person worth protecting?”

Interlocutor: “I suppose so.”

Conceptionalist: “So if I am in a coma, with no brain waves, and I might wake from that coma, can you blamelessly kill me, given that I no longer have moral worth?”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tactic is straightforward:

1) Force the opponent to define their position, and elucidate the limiting ethical proposition.

2) Show that an application of that ethical proposition has wildly counterintuitive ethical consequences if applied elsewhere.

3) Count these implications as costs which raise the intellectual price tag of the competing position beyond what should reasonably be paid.

4) If the opponent offers up a new position, repeat steps 1-3, else – conclude that conceptionalism is the only “consistent” position.

The conceptionalist repeats this dialectical pattern ad-nauseum. They are experts at teasing out the counterintuitive implications of virtually every non-conceptionalist position ever conceived. As we will see, however, they are often mortifyingly inept at reflexively evaluating their own position. This ineptitude is especially ironic, because any length of time spent arguing with a conceptionalist will teach you that they have a particular allergy to inconsistency.

Two Intuitions:

Most conversations on ethics feature a sparring match between logical intuitions and ethical intuitions. Logical intuitions are what allow us to make proper inferences - to see that (If A then B), and (A), then therefore (B). And also therefore following that - (if not B) then also (not A).

We also have ethical intuitions - strongly positive or negative feelings towards certain behaviors that we label as “right” and “wrong”. One of the ways in which we come to believe that an action is right or wrong is with reference to our ethical intuition. Our logical intuitions, however, are frequently used to develop the contours of ethical intuitions in otherwise opaque situations.

For example, I might begin weakly motivated to accept the claim: “The death penalty is appropriate in certain cases”, but also come to realize that I am very strongly motivated to accept the claim that “All life is sacred and must be protected no matter the circumstance.” With some thought and application of logical intuition, I might see that these two beliefs are in conflict, and that one of them should go.

Probably, deciding which belief to discard will involve some assessment of which belief I hold more strongly – and which belief I could do without. In other words, the best position is often a consistent one that commits itself to the fewest wacky propositions.

The conceptionalist relies on this dance. They want you to see, by way of logical intuition, that some position on abortion is inconsistent with another, very strongly held moral belief. They then rely on the interlocutor (and the audience) to make the intellectually cheaper choice and discard whatever ethical proposition they were defending that led them into the conceptionalist’s clever trap.

Of course … that doesn’t have to happen. The imbalance could resolve the other way. It’s possible (and still consistent) that the opponent chooses the other horn of the dilemma. For example, the common conceptionalist tactic to the “abortion is permissible before a heartbeat” position is to attempt to draw a parallel to some sort of cardiology patient who may technically be said to have no such heart beat. It’s always possible for the “heart-beatist” to respond to the challenge like this:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. Turns out, cardiac patients are not morally valuable! Huh! What a day – I’ve learned a new moral fact. Logic has shown me where my ethical intuition was wrong. Thank you for helping me to see this.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The conceptionalist is left with nothing to do but point and stare. As far as he’s concerned, this is a successful reductio and his work is done.

But what exactly is it that’s so wrong about that answer? It’s not an incoherent or inconsistent view, but it is grossly counterintuitive from an ethical perspective. It seems obvious to the conceptionalist (and probably most others) that the “heart-beatist” wildly miscalculated here, because when forced to choose between beliefs, he discarded the more plausible of the two. He chose the more costly position, when a better deal was on the table.

The conceptionalist gets plenty of mileage out of continually proposing these quandaries, because very few of us have a stronger intuition that abortion must be moral than we do that stabbing cardiology patients or coma patients must be immoral. If we can’t have both, we’re inclined to reject the former. Therefore, the cheapest consistent view (which has the fewest wacky commitments) is the conceptionalist view, because we’d rather discard our belief that abortion is permissible than bite the proverbial bullet waiting for us in the other horn of the dilemma.

Smoke and Mirrors:

Generally speaking, this way of evaluating ethical principles seems to be a reasonable way of playing the game. But as with any game – its only fair if we play by the same rules. Fundamentally, the conceptionalist is committed to some axiom or moral principle such as this:

It is true that {moral_value(embryo) == moral_value(adult_human)}.

Occasionally, the interlocutor flips the script, and analyzes the implications of the conceptionalist viewpoint. Sometimes the way this happens is as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interlocutor: “So if a 14 year old girl is raped and forcibly impregnated – are you saying she should have to carry to term?”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The conceptionalist’s answer is very frequently: “yes”. It almost has to be – because it’s very difficult for him to justify the murder of an innocent human being to protect another equal innocent human being from something that isn’t equivalently dire.

Now, let’s take the third party evil out of the analysis, because it complicates the situation and clouds our judgment. Let’s just consider a simple application of contraceptives such as “the morning after pill” which very often acts to forcibly discharge a fertilized embryo. **(Yes, I know, there are alternative viewpoints. Suffice it to say that after a cursory review, I’m persuaded that Plan B has contraceptive as well as ‘abortive’ mechanisms of action. This is just an example, so zip it.)**

An application of the conceptionalist axiom is that perpetrating this act is an actus reus on the order of homicide, and they will frequently reply that they oppose use of Plan Bfor precisely this reason. Now this wacky idea that “morning after” contraceptives are moral tragedies tantamount to homicide is an ethical proposition that most people feel very strongly is false.

But, perplexingly, the conceptionalist will not see this ethically counterintuitive result as any reason to think their position is flawed. Their response is normally something like:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Well yes, I understand that it may be counterintuitive, but a critical examination reveals that that is in fact the case. I’m going to stick with reason here and not let my feelings get the better of me.”

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In other words, the conceptionalist will bite the bullet and move on – and in an act of bewildering inconsistency - won’t see his position as any less justified - or undermined - in any way. Instead of using counterintuitive ethical implications to evaluate the intellectual price tag of his position (in the same way that he evaluated the interlocutor’s position) he will fall back on basic logical reasoning and merely point out that these implications are in fact the consequences of his consistent viewpoint – as if that somehow defuses or derails the objection.

This is the sleight of hand referenced in the title. Depending on which position you are analyzing, the conceptionalist will implicitly change the parameters of the analysis – dialing down the input of ethical intuition and relying more heavily on basic logical consistency.

As an analogy, imagine the conceptionalist and his interlocutor are trying to decide what the rules for chess ought to be:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interlocutor: I think white should move first.

Conceptionalist: That doesn’t seem fair; it gives white an advantage in every game.

Interlocutor: Hmm, ok – what do you think then?

Conceptionalist: I think black should move first.

Interlocutor: That doesn’t seem fair, because it would give black an advantage in every game.

Conceptionalist: Well, someone has to lose.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Functionally, this is the same bait and switch the conceptionalist wants to goad you into. The longer the argument lasts, the more clearly it can be seen. It’s a problem for you to have weird counterintuitive ethical commitments – but it’s no problem for him.

Playing by the Same Rules

In light of this problem, let’s resolve to play the game fairly, and identify the rules ahead of time. We can compare two positions on abortion using the same criteria. If counterintuitive ethical commitments can be used to quantify the intellectual price tag of the non-conceptionalist, then the expense of conceptionalism must be denominated in the same currency. So what exactly is the intellectual price tag of the conceptionalist position? Are there any wacky, counterintuitive results that run afoul of intuition? Probably.

The weirdness of the Conceptionalist Position:

** note ** these are meant to be short and pithy as well as comical. They are casually -not rigorously- researched. Some of them are more serious and others are just meant to be thought provoking and funny. Please take them as such - while seriously considering for yourself what the consequences of the conceptionalist viewpoint really are, in a serious way. **

** the term ‘actus reus’ is used for its legal analogy – to distinguish between the wrongness of the act, or consequence, from the malevolence of the perpetrator’s mind. **

-----

1. In vitro fertilization is a murderous procedure where little kids are used as genetic and financial cannon fodder. IVF is a process by which a doctor can insert fertilized embryos into the womb to help a woman become pregnant. During this procedure, multiple embryos are intentionally created, but then weeded out for scientific reasons – or used as disposable redundancies to make sure the expensive operation is successful. Therefore, an actus reus equivalent to the Sandy Hook Massacre occurs every weekend inside of an in vitro clinic.

2. The morning after pill, ‘Plan B’, perpetrates a moral tragedy which, in terms of results, is the moral equivalent of murdering a baby. The chemical discharge of a fertilized egg from the uterus is an actus reus as vile as killing your neighbor’s infant. Following this:

3. Basic contraceptives, like IUDs, and hormonal pills, while often working to prevent fertilization, can often work in the secondary by preventing human children from surviving; and therefore must be outlawed. Women using birth control methods to prevent implantation probably rival the average American serial killer in terms of moral tragedies perpetrated.

4. Embryonic Stem Cell Research is murder. This process normally results in the destruction (murder) of an embryo (kid) for scientific purposes. (cruel experimentation). It must be outlawed.

5. If a young girl is raped and forcibly impregnated, she must carry the child to term, because that embryo is an innocent child of equal significance. The conceptionalist’s axiom tells us that terminating that pregnancy (slaughtering a young child) is a greater moral crime than forcing the girl to deliver. (The author has a particularly strong intuition that this is egregiously wrong.)

-----

Now, for clarity, let the symbol: ‘$$’ reference whatever intellectual baggage is actually associated with the conceptionalist position. For the sake of this example, let’s consider those 5 propositions above when invoking ‘$$’. If we play this game fairly, we want to ask ourselves if there are any competing positions such that the baggage associated with that position, (let’s call it ‘p’) is less than$$.

So let’s just pick a simple idea that isn’t totally unreasonable. One commonly articulated position is something like the following:

The presence of brain waves is what confers moral value on a human body. Life is identified by the presence of this particular variable, the absence of which equally identifies death.

The conceptionalist might point out that certain coma patients have no brainwaves – to which the person holding the brain wave position might simply say:

“Well yes, ‘0 brain wave’ coma patients aren’t really alive. They’re dead. Through the miracle of modern science, we can pump their heart, oxygenate their blood, and deliver nutrients to their body – and maybe we can even bring them back to life. We often do, for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is to prevent the suffering of their families. We are, however, under no direct moral obligation to resurrect the dead for their own sake.”

So the “brainwaver” has chosen to commit himself to the consequence of the conceptionalist’s challenge. The italicized propositions above are now p.

Is that response ethically counterintuitive? Sort of? Maybe? It’s a little weird… but the relevant question is whether or not it’s more counterintuitive – more obviously wrong – than the conceptionalist’s commitments. Is the price tag p in this case greater than $$?

As the answer to that question, the author says straightforwardly, ‘no’. It is clearer that the propositions contained in $$ are false than it is that p is false.

Now, this analysis was incredibly rudimentary. Proper calculation would demand we investigate each position more thoroughly, and only after carefully considering all of the merits and demerits of each of the two hypotheses could we discharge that intellectual duty.

But doing so would be beyond the scope of this note, and the author is no “brainwaver” anyway. This has been an analysis of argumentation, not of metaethics or metaphysics, and we shouldn’t stray too far into the weeds.

In closing, it is once more asserted that the conceptionalist must counterbalance his conviction against alternative views by honestly assessing the oddity of the implications to which his position is committed. The rest of us should disabuse ourselves of our tendency to go along with the conceptionalist’s game without executing a well-aimed counter-riposte, and continue having more rigorous, less myopic conversations about contemporary ethical dilemmas.