Could't the Contrarian just as easily have accepted that different entities have different "levels" of personhood? The odds of a skin cell becoming sentient is quite low, after all. Of course, this would render abortion more palatable based on miscarriage rates, but at least they could have avoided claiming that GAIs aren't people
I based the C character on the thoughts that 'a materialistic sophisticated Christian' evoked in my head; he didn't go with a multi-category scheme, just the ordinary binary. I don't think I've seen any such scheme seriously offered by a Christian philosopher, and I don't think it really deals with the slippery slope because you still have sharp discontinuities between each "level".
On the other hand, the Apologist seems a little too quick to bite the infanticide bullet.
As opposed to what?
I based the C character on the thoughts that 'a materialistic sophisticated Christian' evoked in my head; he didn't go with a multi-category scheme, just the ordinary binary.
Fair enough. It's your character, you know better than me what he'd say. My strawman sense is tingling, but then you've stated that you didn't intend either of them to be right so I guess it's unfair to demand an ironman of either side.
As opposed to what?
More discussion of where, exactly, such a line should be drawn. I'm not saying he shouldn't have bitten it eventually, mind.
A few years ago, I wrote a little dialogue I imagined between 2 materialists, one of whom was for and one against abortion, centering on the personal identity question. I recently cleaned it up and added a number of references for the biological claims.
You can read it at An Abortion Dialogue.
Early feedback from #lesswrong is that it's a 'nicely enjoyable read' and 'quite good'. I hope everyone likes it, even if it doesn't exactly break new philosophical ground.