Babies and Qualia

Having reached an age at which procreation is a thing done by my peers, I found myself grappling with the question of whether or not procreation was a thing for me to do.  After talking to a friend, he sent me a link to a sample draft of a paper, by L.A. Paul, about an epistemic issue involved in the decision to have a child.  I read it, thought about it, and filed away the info in my "I'll blog about that someday" folder.  Turns out NPR posted a blog about the paper last week.  So, it seems to be the time to toss out some words.

Conventional thinking lands us in an untenable middle-ground between two approaches to the question of procreation.  On one side is the "I want one" camp whose main approach to the question is emotion-based.  One feels one's way through the question by means of one's emotive inclinations, or lack thereof, to procreate.  On the other side is the "Let's think about this" camp whose main approach to the question is reason.  These individuals cost / benefit their way through the question, assess issues of economic concerns, ask existential questions regarding the nature of reality, etc.  Both positions imagine their way through the questions and concerns to reach a decision on whether or not they shall fuck without using contraceptives.

Paul's paper tosses a wrench into the process.  The wrench is this:  Many parents report that having a child is a life-changing experience that fundamentally alters their perception of reality.  The life-changing nature of parenthood significantly alters one's epistemic framework after childbirth.  Given the significance of the life alteration, it is impossible for one to reason, emote, or imagine their way through the question of procreation to make an informed decision:  You really do not, and can not, know what it will be like to have the child until after you have the child.

Most people seem to think this conclusion is either obvious or hogcock.  Unfortunately, most people think that as a result of a knee-jerk reaction to being told something about their self by an academic, rather than a thoughtful critique of the thesis put forth by Paul.  So, rather than be knee-jerk about it, let's assess the crux of Paul's argument:  Epistemically-transformative experiences.  Paul uses the example provided by Frank Jackson, so let's go with that one.

Imagine a neuroscientist named Mary.  She has complete knowledge of the mechanical and neurological processes by which one sees color.  When someone sees the color red, Mary can completely explain how they see the color red.  Sadly, Mary has been raised in a black and white laboratory.  She has only ever seen black and white; she has never seen the color red.  Jackson argues that despite her knowledge about color, light, and neurology, it is impossible for Mary to know what it is like to see red, to access the qualia of "seeing red".

Paul argues that the "seeing red" qualia is akin to the "having a child" qualia.  Just as Mary cannot read and research her way to "what it is like to see red", one cannot reason or emote one's way to "what it is like to be a parent / have a child".

My initial inclination is to say that "seeing red" differs from "having a child" in a way that renders the Mary story irrelevant.  The qualia of seeing red may be unique and one may only gain it by having the experience.  Having a child is not this sort of thing.  Rather, "having a child" is the heaping of all the discrete particular actions involved in having a child:  providing nutrients, changing diapers, paying bills, having concerns, teaching skills, running errands, buying toys, etc.  In my estimation, I can approximate what it is like to have a child by talking to parents, babysitting, spending time in the Wal-Mart toy aisle, staring at shitty diapers, and setting my money on fire.

The problem, of course, is what Paul argues:  Many parents claim that "having a child" is a life-changing event that is epistemically transformative.  If these self-reports of parents are correct, then one cannot get to the qualia of "having a child" by heaping up a lot of babysitting.  When one has a child, something magical happens, and they become a different person who can access a bit of qualia that was previously unattainable.

I am not sure what make of that.  If true, then we seem to be epistemically screwed.  Someone who fervently argues against procreation may, after having a child, become a fantastic parent.  A woman who breaks up with males that exhibit reservations against procreation may eventually turn out to loathe her children, and lament leaving the dudes who were not keen on knocking her up.  Moreover, one seems unable to know whether or not the event will be life-changing, for them, until after it happens.

There's also the problem of being reductionists about qualia.  To go back to the Mary story, how different is "seeing red" from "seeing orange"?  If we treat these as atomistic then we get one answer, but if red and orange are on a spectrum with white and black then perhaps there is no vast epistemic gap, and Mary can get to red from her white and black qualia.  Similarly, perhaps "having a child" isn't too different from raising a sibling, or babysitting a lot, or having a fussy cat.  We can place parenthood on a spectrum, and then approximate it by navigating our way through the spectrum.

Ultimately, I like Paul's paper and think it is a helpful application of philosophic theory to practical concerns.  Anything that softens an individual's stance on procreation, with respect to one's own desires (pro or con), is probably a good thing.  Raising the question of procreation's impact upon the individual knower is beneficial.  Telling people they cannot predict what having a child will be like, for them, and providing an argument seems keen.

Unfortunately, Paul's project maintains the theme of asking procreative questions from the parent's perspective:  How can you know whether or not you will like having a child?  It continues the trend of treating children as a means to the parent's ends.  In contrast to Paul, and most of humanity, I think the better procreative question to ask is one that addresses the concerns of neither the mother nor the father:  Will your child want to have been born?

Buckyballs are Delicious

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is suing the maker of Buckyballs.  This because since 2009 twelve stupid fucking kids have swallowed the balls and so incurred intestinal damage.  Several online retailers have agreed to stop selling Buckyballs.

The maker of Buckyballs has stated that they will fight against this lawsuit and continue to sell Buckyballs.  From their homepage:

"A government agency (the Consumer Product Safety Commission) is saying they should be recalled because children occasionally get ahold of them. This is unfair. We market exclusively to adults. We are vigorously defending our right to market these products you love."

A company produces a desk toy for adults.  Twelve kids nom on the desk toy.  So, the logical conclusion has followed:  You can no longer purchase the desk toy on Amazon.  This thanks to a few fuckheads who did not take the time to explain to their fuckheaded fuckspawn that they should not eat magnets.

Because they are magnets.

God damn it.

Anyway, if you'd like to support the makers of buckyballs you can still purchase the product on their website.  They make for a nice desk toy.  Or, you can apparently feed them to stupid fucks.

Cause, man, they sure do look delicious.

God damn babies are stupid.

RGL: Legendary Baby

Having obtained an offspring, Mikey probably won't have much time to farm loots in Diablo 3.  So, to compensate for his lack of gear acquisition, I decided to post the stats for his son.

Rooney "The Rooninator" Roonington
Legendary Baby

52512 Damage Per Second

+115 to Vague Sense of Immortality

-55 to Sleep

-65% Gold

+73 to Unconditional Love

+25 to Shit Drops

+3,000 to Responsibility

-10,000 to Freedom

+1 Excuse to Buy LEGOS

On Equip, Rooney grants parent the "You Can't Understand Because You Don't Have Kids" spell.  This spell may be cast on any non-parent character, and counters any spell they cast, ever.

He'll fuck you up.


Unique Equipped
ilvl 10 days

Sell Value:  Priceless

Schrodinger's Fetus: Arizona pregnancies two weeks before conception

The fetus fetishing fucks are at it again.

On page eight of the proposed amendment to H.B. 2036, lawmakers lay out the “gestational age” of the child to be “calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman,” and from there, outlaws abortion “if the probable gestational age of [the] unborn child has been determined to be at least twenty weeks.”

That's right. In Arizona, a fetus legally begins to gestate before it is a zygote.

Now, if you support this bill, I realize that you are incapable of thought. But if you can think? Then think about this: You are a woman. Your menstrual period begins. According to this Arizona law, your future child has now begun gestating.

Or, well, that's not quite correct.

If, after your menstrual period, an egg is released that becomes fertilized and, so, a zygote, and that zygote attaches to begin gestating, then its gestation period already legally began prior to its being a zygote, when your period started. But, if an egg is released, and it is not fertilized, then its gestation period did not begin prior to its being a zygote, since it never became a zygote.

If an egg never becomes a zygote, then it never was a zygote.

If an egg becomes a zygote, then it already was a zygote when your last period started.

This is Schrödinger's fetus.

One might ask how Arizona legislators are capable of thinking these thoughts. Perhaps this quote can offer some insight:

"I would like to listen to the 50 million-plus children that have been aborted and killed since Roe v. Wade,'' Senator Steve Smith says."I would like to listen to what they think of this bill.''

I'll give you a moment to consider what possible problems exist in that thought. For members of the Arizona Legislatur who support this bill? He's an image of a dancing squirrel:




Alright. Those of you who thought, "Unborn babies don't think." win a prize.

The problem is that for these people, these fetus fetishing fucks, unborn babies do think; they do have opinions. Because unborn babies are floating around with Heavenly Father or Jesus or God or whatever bullshit they believe. Unborn babies are considerable things who have opinions, thoughts, and feel ways about stuff despite the fact that, well, they fucking don't.

Practically, this law is aimed at decreasing the amount of time during which pregnancies are legal. It's another step towards limiting the rights of women in favor of protecting the non-lives of unborn fetuses. More than that, though, this is a step towards creating a situation within which all women are considered to be pregnant after their periods:

“Considering that it’s anti-choice nuts we’re talking about, it’s safe to assume that they’d simply prefer a situation where all women of reproductive age are considered to be pregnant, on the grounds that they could be two weeks from now,” RH Reality Check’s Amanda Marcotte adds in a recently-penned editorial.

So, if you're a woman of reproductive age in Arizona? After this bill passes you're in for quite a treat! Think about it. Once your period starts, your potential child has begun gestating regardless of whether or not you fuck anyone.

We'll toss this bill atop the pile of reasons why women who vote for Republicans are exhibinting a very special kind of self-loathing.

"Take my rights away! I don't want control over my own body!!! TREAT ME LIKE A BABY OVEN!"

Idiots.

Sarah Pailin's Baby

When Sarah Palin announced she was having a baby, local news papers were confused. Why did she wait until 6 months before she was due? And boy-howdy does she look good for being that far along.

But the story then went away.

Six weeks later she has her baby. She was Texas, her water broke, she gave a speech and took the slow train back to Alaska laster on. All very strange. They named the child Trig, he has Down's Syndrome.

But the story went away.

Now some journalists and bloggers have done some digging. And they are now calling shenanigans. They've been doing through the news archives and looking and pictures. They thing that the whole story is a sham and that the kid, is Pailin's oldest daughters. Here are two links that walk through the story.

These are just rumors, but both posts make really good arguments. Look for this to break into the mainstream media soon. Where ever you are politically, her vetting and announcement happened very quickly. That along is enough for someone to dig deeper and ask some had questions.

***UPDATE: Do you know how Gov. Palin is dealing with the rumors that her youngest son Trig is not her child, but her oldest daughters? Announcing that her oldest daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant. That Bristol will soon be marrying the unborn baby's father. And that Bristol is about to learn the hard lessons adulthood. Thus Bristol is being forced into a married that is doomed to fail.

What else does this mean. The math says that Trig is Pailin's child. It also means that Pailin is just a bad mother.

***UPDATE 2: Internet Grump John C Dvorak has a theory:

Bristol is not pregnant at all but she did have the baby Trig and that story is becoming unraveled. Sarah is going to have to leave the race and the party needs a fall guy. The fall guy caused the problem in the first place: Bristol. Palin will exit for the “sake of the family” No harm, no foul. This is too much of a weird coincidence otherwise.

Not bad, and it makes the time line work. John Gruber brings up Tom Eagleton who lasted 18 days before withdrawing from the McGovern ticket in 1972. All Eagleton did was not tell everyone that he has been treated for depression.

However this turns out Sarah Palin through her daughter (and at least one baby) under the bus for political gain.

Macie Hope: Born Twice for Mockery

There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, "Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him." Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus said to Him, "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?"

I do not know if this is a bigger "fuck you" to Nicodemus or Jesus. But the double birth of Macie Hope is most assuredly a big old FUCK YOU to one of them:

The first “birth” was about six months into Keri McCartney’s pregnancy, when surgeons at Texas Children’s Hospital took the tiny fetus from Keri’s womb to remove a tumor that would have killed Macie before she was born.

The second time was on May 3, when the McCartneys welcomed their surgically repaired — and perfectly healthy — baby girl into the world.

So let the records show that Jesus Christ was incapable of shoving Nicodemus back into his mommy's snatch while surgeons as Texas Children’s Hospital were more than able to yank out Marie Hope, cut her up, and then shove her back in. And if fuckheads in Texas can do something your lord and savior cannot? It's time to rethink your life.

Also, I don't know if being "born twice" is somehow a requirement for being the antichrist any more than homosexuality or partial judaism are required. But I'm still keeping my eye on you, Macie Hope. If we can't trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn't die then we most assuredly can't trust someone who was born, shoved back in, and then born again.

Finally, if you take a cake out of the oven before it is done but then put it back in? There is a chance that the cake will collapse in on itself. Let's hope the same is not true of babies.

Perinatal Hospices: Supporting Psychosis

If pregnancy had a warning label it would be "May cause psychosis". And this unique brand of psychosis is not limited to the parents. From the fetus fetishizing fucks of the religious right to the couples who have a miscarriage and forget that they can make another one fetuses and babies make people dumb. This article on MSNBC delves into another component of the pregnancy psychosis: the Perinatal Hospice.

A Perinatal Hospice is a hospice for families who know that their baby will die shortly after birth. You see, when a fetus is diagnosed with a fatal condition which ensures its death shortly (within a few days) after birth some couples suffering from psychosis will decide to continue the pregnancy. When this happens a perinatal hospice can be found through sites such as perinatalhospice.org which will help foster the parent's delusion by cutting a lock of their baby's hair, making hand impressions, and bathing the body in warm water to stave off rigor mortis. Perinatal hospices exploit the delusions of parents.

"It was clear I was taking him around to say hello and goodbye" said one father of his taking his soon-to-die son to "meet" friends and relatives. “My big hope was that his life, however long it was going to be, would be full and not painful," said the same father of his soon-to-die son. Another couple who learned three months before its birth that their baby would die soon after birth adopted another approach:

"We weren’t going to get to keep him, but this was our time with him. We think of it as our summer with Gabriel. We took him fishing. We had a family portrait taken. We took him to a baseball game. We picked out his casket. All of those were ways of parenting Gabriel.”

All of these approaches, all of these manners in which parents deal with the inevitable loss of a fetus or death of a baby contain a degree of psychosis, of a "loss of contact with reality". And while some may sympathize with the parents and see this as a beautiful way to confront a tragic loss the error in this thinking can be made plain in one simple statement:

YOU CAN MAKE ANOTHER ONE YOU FUCKHEADS!

And not only is the truth that children are a renewable resource useful in this conversation but also the fact that fetuses are not people; that babies are not people. The father who was "taking him around to say hello and goodbye" is suffering from psychosis. The baby is not saying anything, is not in any way engaged in the act of hello or goodbye. The couple who took their still-in-the-womb fetus fishing, who took a family portrait of their selves, are suffering from psychosis. Both the baby and the fetus, in these examples, were basically inert objects, themselves less functional than retarded kittens.

But these psychotic parents, these delusional idiots, embrace stupid and abandon reality. Rather than discard the failure and try again they coddle the doomed pregnancy and refuse to let go as they confuse nobility with petty clinging, reason with psychosis.

It is not wise. It is not noble. It is not beneficial. It is not healthy. It is not good. Perinatal Hospices do not behoove anyone. Perinatal Hospices profit off of delusional, weak parents seeking an outlet for their grief who refuse to accept reality and instead harbor a grand delusion that their dying fetus is anything more than a dying fetus.

"We picked out his casket. All of those were ways of parenting Gabriel."

Think about that.

I can appreciate that it would be difficult to discover five months into a pregnancy that the fetus was flawed in such a way as to ensure its demise shortly after birth. Presumably those five months would have been filled with hopes and planning, dreams of the future of the child and excitement over raising the being.

The problem is that parents confuse the being which is with the being which may be; they confuse the illusion child in their dreams which the being which actually exists. They get ahead of themselves and think of the fetus as a child which could go fishing, attend ball games, think, and feel. Certainly it would be difficult to lose the child in which one had invested such time and cultivated such memories.

But you aren't losing the illusion child in your head. You're losing the sickly fetus you've never met which exists in reality. You're confusing what exists in your mind with what exists in reality.

And that is psychosis.

Not Merely Stupid..*

Babies also lie.

*