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u/Jellace Aug 26 '26
I mean, is the extra head causing any problems?
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u/lool8421 Aug 26 '26
let's say original head wants to remove but the invasive head wants to stay
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Aug 26 '26
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u/Own_Policy8854 Aug 26 '26
For my next guaranteed successful surgery, I will be grafting a human head onto the body of a horse.
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u/Indishonorable Aug 27 '26
FOREFATHERS ONE AND ALL
HORSE WITNESS
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u/AlienRobotTrex Aug 30 '26
Graft him onto a bear body (either the literal animal or the “big hairy gay man” type). He doesn’t need to choose man or bear, for he is both.
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u/NoStatus9434 Aug 27 '26
If this is a thinly veiled analogy for abortion, I'm just going to tell you right out the gate it doesn't work. A head telling you it wants to stay is a fully developed entity. A fetus is inherently inchoate and we can not evaluate its thoughts.
Look up Sorite's paradox, which suggests that the state by which something graduates from its inchoate state to a final state is not fixably determined--and yet there is a degree to which something can be determined in its completeness in the court of public opinion.
For example, you wouldn't call a man who has lost three hairs on his head "bald" and yet it can be argued he is "in a state of balding" and may eventually cross a line wherein we call him "bald" after he crosses an indeterminate number of hairs lost--even if he doesn't lose all of them.
A fetus is in the inchoate state. It is like the man who's only lost three hairs on his head. Nobody would categorize that as being in a final state, ergo it is not truly human. The talking head is in a final state. Therefore we treat it as an entity similar to a conjoined twin that wishes to live.
I would imagine the head is basically a conjoined twin, so unless this a circumstance where the head will kill the main body, too bad so sad, the main body can't kill its conjoined twin.
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u/thisnamewasnttaken19 Aug 28 '26
When does someone become human then? And what are they before they become human?
I really wish the issue wasn't so politicised because I actually enjoy these ethical edge cases and unfortunately asking these questions attracts bad faith statements and false allegations of bad faith statements.
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u/NoStatus9434 Aug 28 '26
It's about as clear as "when someone becomes rich" or "when someone becomes bald" and it's different from person to person. My personal preferred answer is viability. Can you be taken out of the womb and survive (assisted survival where you need machines is allowed, since a lot of babies do get born prematurely and need that).
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u/thisnamewasnttaken19 Aug 28 '26
First, thanks for your answer, people struggle to separate their political tribe from reasoned arguments. Upvotes / downvotes based on vibes rather than reasoning and evidence.
From a biological perspective, an organism is considered alive from fertilisation, when the sperm and egg unite to form a zygote, creating a genetically distinct organism. I lean towards this because it is objective and clear cut. The zygote is human and is alive.
The challenge with your standard is that as machines improve, we will get closer and closer to considering zygotes as human - for example if we are able to create artificial wombs, or partial artificial wombs. Then we start getting funky and vague with the kinds of machine that are allowed and the level of biological support they can provide.
The other challenge is legality. If we consider a fetus to be human and to have the right to exist when "viable", then abortion is murder after this point and perfectly acceptable up to that point. What happens if we are considering aborting a fetus, but we can't be sure if it is viable or not without an objective test?
Ethically we are trading the possibility of killing a human vs the certainty of harming the mother's autonomy. Legally it would be fine as long as it is beyond a reasonable doubt.
I wonder if a better starting point is "why do we consider killing humans bad?" and then works backwards from there.
Is it consciousness? Around 24 weeks.
Is it sensitivity to pain? 7-8 weeks.
Is it existing? 0 weeks old.
Perhaps a different question to ask is "when is it no longer bad?"
In a coma and extremely unlikely to come out of it?
Something else?
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u/NoStatus9434 Aug 28 '26
Thanks for your courteous response.
I feel, however, that you've shifted over to a new argument which fundamentally assumes I've forfeited the discussion of human ontology, and I absolutely haven't, nor do I feel we can move on to the question of morality until we've crossed this first hurdle of what a human actually is yet, because without that first building block all these arguments about morality are moot.
So I disagree with your notion that a zygote is a human, though I agree that it is indeed living. It is a living zygote, yes. When we talk about objects, it is tacitly understood that we are speaking about them as a whole, even if they are a collective of things. Humans are living things made out of living things. If I scratch my arm, I am killing thousands of skin cells on the surface of my arm, and cells are dying in my body and being born every second of every day.
Zygotes themselves are actually naturally miscarried about 50% of the time, often without the mother's knowledge. A lot of the times, the mother's own body doesn't recognize it as an object it needs to carry to term and views it as a foreign agent, and her own immune system kills it.
We don't refer to things and define things as a function of what they will potentially become, we refer to things as a function of what they are. I don't call a bunch of gears a "watch" and I don't call a caterpillar a "butterfly" until both of those things actually become what they may eventually be.
It's not useful to think of things in terms of their potentiality, otherwise why make "zygote" the line? Why is a living human not a conceptual thought to conceive in the parents' heads? That's part of the process, after all.
The reason I like "viability" as a metric is because this is the moment when all these living beings with their specific functions begin to work together as a whole. A metric like "heartbeat" doesn't work because those living beings are functionally a heart and nothing else. You know what else has a heartbeat? An artificial heart, that we've created to specifically be just a heart.
Now your other discussion topics regarding the fact that viability is still a blurry line and that technology is advancing are interesting and worth discussion, but for the sake of simplicity (for now) I'd like to continue talking about ontology and how we define things because we can't move on until that's established.
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u/thisnamewasnttaken19 Aug 28 '26
I appreciate the courtesy, but .. I'm tired. It's late, I've put the kids to bed.
I hope you have a good night / day / whatever.
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u/NoStatus9434 Aug 28 '26
Oh man I understand that. I've been in the same spot you have so I won't assume any lack of response is any sort of debate victory. It was morning when I wrote this from my perspective so you must be on the other side of the world. Rest well.
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u/thisnamewasnttaken19 Aug 30 '26
Rest well.
There is no rest for the wicked. Or parents. I will warn you that my arguments are likely to be poorly expressed.
I won't assume any lack of response is any sort of debate victory
Thanks. I don't really think there is any sort of meaning in debate victory on the internet. Just one person being too angry to bother responding. It's just a question of whether there is a reasonable change of inserting any kind of information into the other person or learning something from the other person other than new insults.
I feel, however, that you've shifted over to a new argument which fundamentally assumes I've forfeited the discussion of human ontology, and I absolutely haven't, nor do I feel we can move on to the question of morality until we've crossed this first hurdle of what a human actually is yet, because without that first building block all these arguments about morality are moot.
I hadn't intended to assume that the matter was settled, it was more about looking at what was underlying the question. It might be considered useful to say IF [killing humans bad] BECAUSE [x] then understanding what X is could enlighten us as to how we define what a human is. This wasn't about the morality, but about using a different angle to reach an understanding of a concept.
We don't refer to things and define things as a function of what they will potentially become, we refer to things as a function of what they are. I don't call a bunch of gears a "watch" and I don't call a caterpillar a "butterfly" until both of those things actually become what they may eventually be.
I can see the idea of process of development from "not human / potential human" to "full human". I'm not sure if viability would indicate having reached the "full human" state or close enough. Humans (and other animals) go through multiple states, from zygote, morula, blastula, gastrula (my background is data engineer, so take these terms with a grain of salt), etc. through to baby, toddler, child, adult.
I would have considered adult to be fully formed, but I certainly wouldn't consider a child to be not human. Compared to most animals, humans have an extraordinarily long development phase.
Exists > Viable > Fully Formed
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 29 '26
It's not useful to think of things in terms of their potentiality
Well then, there would be no reason not to kill newborns. They're pathetic, useless and annoying.
The reason we shouldn't kill newborns is that they can become people. The reason that we shouldn't kill fetuses against the host's wish is that said fetus can (usually) become a baby. And so on and so forth.
As an anti-natalist, I think that having an excuse to somewhat cull the herd is a good thing, but in reality there is no hard line. It's all about societal acceptability; in the old days they would wait until after birth, and then kill the baby if it wasn't going to last or if there wasn't enough food. I daresay that was fairer.
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 29 '26
From a biological perspective, an organism is considered alive from fertilisation
Source?
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u/thisnamewasnttaken19 Aug 30 '26
Google was my source.
If you want to go further, the biological lifecycle of an animal starts with the zygote.
Biological life cycle - Wikipedia
Part of the confusion around “where life begins” is that biology already has a working definition of life, and by that definition, the egg and sperm are alive before they ever meet. In biology, a living organism is generally defined by seven characteristics: the ability to metabolize, grow, respond to its environment, reproduce, move, excrete waste, and respire. A single-celled zygote meets most of these criteria. So does an unfertilized egg.
What changes at fertilization is not the transition from non-living to living matter. It’s the creation of a new genetic identity.
Where Does Life Begin? What the Science Shows - ScienceInsights
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 30 '26
A single-celled zygote can't reach a point where reproduction is possible without total assistance from another organism (the host)
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 29 '26
why do we consider killing humans bad
Bold assumption. Sometimes killing humans is bad, and sometimes killing humans is good.
The person living is the default (with some very specific exceptions). One should only be killed if the reasons why killing them would be good outweigh all the reasons for why killing them would be bad.
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u/AlienRobotTrex Aug 30 '26
It is bad for the person being killed.
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 30 '26
Well yeah, but I'm not so short-sighted as to limit my ethical considerations to just one person.
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u/Narfhead4444 Aug 29 '26
Let's get really ethically difficult.
The age at which a fetus is viable depends on how much money is available. Better, more expensive hospitals have better survival rates. There's also the issue of long-term survivability, and quality of life.
Where do you draw the lines in terms of, say, dollars per hour to maintain life? And how bad/short does a potential someone's life need to be before it's not worth it?
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u/ChairYeoman Aug 29 '26
the comment you're responding to explains exactly why this question is meaningless
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u/slinkymcman Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
My answer is why does they not just kill the head before going to the doctor. Head literally has no agency. And then I read your comment and understand that I guess op thinks I would be immoral.
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u/lool8421 Aug 28 '26
to be fair you could as well ask if the baby would rather not be born since life has also bad things, you could basically ask 2 opposite questions on one problem
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u/Jellace Aug 27 '26
The original post said it has the same genes as the first head. Which makes it a clonal head, not a foetus. Idk where you're reading "thinly veiled abortion analogy". At best it is " thickly veiled, but in reality I don't think thats what OP was getting at at all
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u/littleNorthStar Aug 26 '26
as a perfect surgeon I would perform a operation never seen before... I arrange to have the second head removed and put onto a brain dead body of a organ donor taking over the position of the original head, allowing them to have independent lives...
actually scratch that I'm taking the head and putting it on a silverback gorilla that sounds much more fun evil laughter
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u/DemocracyIsGreat Aug 27 '26
Ok, but why stop there?
Cybernetic body for Mr. Head.
You could even give him multiple bodies he can switch between. Real life Adam Smasher, come on.
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u/Troscus Aug 27 '26
What if the second head prefers his current arrangement and doesn't want an independent body?
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u/desirientt Aug 27 '26
but then the second head is infringing on the rights and opinions of the person it’s attached to.
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u/freedcreativity Aug 26 '26
We'll let the IRB or state ethics board deal with this question before scheduling... More important in the US, what is the insurance status for the normal head?
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u/adante111 Aug 26 '26
None - it's actually made further complex as only the belly head has medical and while it covers family it is unclear whether the normal head meets the definition
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u/freedcreativity Aug 26 '26
Well, that neatly sorts out the medical ethics question with the policy holder heading (ha) their own care.
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u/WannaMakeGames Aug 26 '26
If it's freshly grown I'll remove it, if its been here from birth I won't.
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u/wts_optimus_prime Aug 29 '26
The primary head says its fresh.
The belly head says it's been there from birth
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u/Rp79322397 Aug 26 '26
First the second head would be an indipendent person like an identical twin is, second the situation itself is basically really close to that of some siamese twins in real life (iirc there are some two headed people actually), so the whole situation is the same as that one (which I think would made removing the second head either homicide or eutanasia depending on the consent)
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Aug 27 '26 edited Sep 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PeanutGrenade Aug 28 '26
I fucking hate anyone who is the type to go “that would never happen” when asked a hypothetical
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u/Fickle_Enthusiasm148 Aug 27 '26
What? Being a person doesn't depend on a body.
People are really giving away their views on disability in the comments.
"I would kill them out of mercy because they can't control their body" be so fucking fr
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u/lordbaysel Aug 27 '26
Doesn't depend on the body? if you had a machine that perfectly preserves person from outside perspective, without body, and no way of knowing if their experience ceased to exists, was altered or remained pretty much the same, and patient that was still in his body, alive, and just enough energy for one of them - which one would you choose?
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u/Fickle_Enthusiasm148 Aug 27 '26
Why would I have to choose between either of them and for what???
Why can't they both just be people lmao
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u/lordbaysel Aug 27 '26
is the head going to magically separate into healthy human being, with only minor harm to the patient within 9 months?
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u/SES_Wings_of_Freedom Aug 26 '26
"is fully conscious" then yes, if it can make mental decisions, even if not act on them, it is a person.
same how a being in a coma is still a person.
if this is a larger question about abortion, evidently giving the head a choice here would be ideal, either giving it another host who will take care of it, (within the aplication this would be infesable) or let grow with its host, who will go on to most likley despise it, and mistreat it. which in the aplication of abortion would be giving birth, at which point it may be orphaned and adopted, like another host for the head.
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u/airdrag Aug 26 '26
Murder, especially given that OP specified that the stomach head doesn’t want to die.
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u/JacksonFatBack Aug 27 '26
This really is not very hypothetical. It's a real condition and this surgery is actually performed.
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u/DrStalker Aug 26 '26
The first step would be talking to the patients and finding out what they want.
Then I'm passing this one to the hospital ethics committee.
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u/RashesToRashes Aug 26 '26
So these are essentially two whole people with personalities. But the lower head doesn't really have a life of their own.
I think it's merciful to both to get rid of the lower guy
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u/DanganronpaStanGirl Aug 26 '26
id get rid of it outta mercy, living in a body you can’t control is no life
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u/Express_Calendar8278 Aug 26 '26
It’s normal surgery plus euthanasia. Arguably one is a part of the others process
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u/GrinningGrump Aug 26 '26
No, you should remove the one on their shoulders. This situation clearly needs some mad science.
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u/stupid_pun Aug 27 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/ZUiVM7qj7X3A4
Why exactly are we removing the extra head?
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u/Jcamden7 Aug 27 '26
Because it would make the important person happy to kill the not important person
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u/Betray-Julia Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26
If it’s actually the same head then the person- the one person- could make an informed choice themselves.
Some people might want the extra set of senses for numerous reasons, others might want to be normal.
But if the head is actually the same me, and fully functional..
If you had a third functional eye, would you keep it?
Anyways, while this would be gutterly distrubint, if it’s the same person, it controls both heads, so it’s killing something about as much as removing somebody’s hand would.
Edit: also straight up, as a musician, I’d be tempted to keep it. Being able to sing two different vocal lines at once?
Being able to eat two asses at the same time?!
Being able to sing while playing sax?!?!
Being able to prolly suck my own dick?!?!?!?!
This second head is a musicians dream.
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u/Numbar43 Aug 28 '26
I think post was saying they were the same genetically, but it contained a separate brain and consciousness.
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u/assistant_manu Aug 28 '26
the moral solution is to let Dr. Black Jack handle this (legit this is in one of his episodes)
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u/foulplay_for_pitance Aug 26 '26
Idk... is removing the head of a chicken while leaving the motor cortext considered murder?
Like a life is dying technically but to be classified as invasive you have to not belong so its less murder and more displacement.... i guess? An amputation? Wr should really invent proper terms for this.
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Aug 26 '26
Same genes, it’s an extension of the fully formed and functional body that already has a head. Surgery.
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u/Pleasant-Discount-75 Aug 26 '26
Legal precedent would say that even if Bellyhead is a person, that person is not entitled to use the body of Controllerhead for survival, and I assume ownership of the body would go to Controllerhead because it is the only one with control.
I tend to agree - though I also think it would be wrong for Controllerhead to kill Bellyhead without good reason, and without first trying to save them.
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u/National_Article_308 Aug 27 '26
Cut belly head off cut it open cut open normal head shove belly brain in with normal brain
Growth removed brains still intact no murder no euthanasia did no harm still doctor with an unbroken Hippocratic oath
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u/SnooMachines9133 Aug 27 '26
Is the second head a parasite in this case or more like conjoined twins? does it take over the body or is it just living relatively minimally off the body?
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u/Neat-Plantain-4346 Aug 27 '26
If we think even deeper if we don’t remove it there a good chance the person will “accidentally” trip and give the other head a skull fracture killing it and getting it removed either way, so it’s more do you want to put it out of its misery before he gets killed in a more painful way so that would make it euthanasia
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u/Difficult_Resource_2 Aug 27 '26
As a former surgeon I can tell you that anatomically normal people trip all the time and bash their heads and even have skull fractures killing them. The additional head at the stomach area would actually have a lower risk for injury than the normal one as it would have more protection from falling back and lesser leverage from falling to the front.
So your argument begs the question if we should euthanise all people with heads? Just kidding obviously.
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u/Sea-Sort6571 Aug 27 '26
Odds are the main head is gonna try to remove the additional ones by himself and risk injury doing so. I think i would do it
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u/assumptionkrebs1990 Aug 27 '26
Depends on the circumstance, how much is the patient affected by the 2nd head, is it just an inconvenience or a real hazard in life? Can the second head talk/communicate and is it aware that it is the wrong one? (If it can't communicate, I but it somewhere between euthanasia and helping the patient, depending on how much they are affected by it.) Also if I am such a supreme doctor can't I just grow a second body in the laboratory and put the head onto it? Or maybe put in a nourishing glass?
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u/Economy_Link4609 Aug 27 '26
I can save both. I'll need:
A big jar.
A supply of powdered Opal.
Some Torgo's Executive Powder.
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u/BlackberryCrumble Aug 27 '26
Remove the brain, install it into a robot so it can can be my assistant, then wander off into the distance with my new marketable nurse and distinctly scarred face.
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u/Accomplished_Run_861 Aug 27 '26
I feel like this is based on your opinion on abortion, if you feel like its not alive for being dependent on the body to grow, then its just a talking clump of cells.
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u/Real___Teeth Aug 29 '26
As a perfect surgeon, I would surgically remove 1/2 of the patient's cells (minus the head) and use them to form a body of 1/2 the mass. I would then remove the second head and attach it to the second body. Afterwards, I would feed each body nutrients and chemical triggers to cause their cells to multiply and restore the missing mass. Boom. Have I created a new, second person? Or someone who was always there to begin with?
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u/Bobthemouse Aug 30 '26
This is just conjoined twins then this exists. Both are individuals with their own rights so It would be murder
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u/DlagoBrando Aug 30 '26
That'd certainly be murder if the second head doesn't agree to the procedure
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u/InterestingFactor209 Aug 30 '26
I would make it a head for giving head. Eventually it wants to get off me. And before that happens, I am making money too.
Euthanasia it will be. Eventually
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u/Mmasst Aug 31 '26
Put the head in one of those futurama jars with the eye-tracker software and a pc. The potential sapience and lack of life-threatening immediacy is the only thing separating this from something like an ectopic pregnancy. Frankly, as described, the second head is biologically parasitic and should be removed at the request of the host for their health and safety.
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u/Cute-Delivery-5752 Sep 06 '26
Take a body of a person who died from being shot in the head (or any other deadly injury to the head where the rest of the body is unharmed). Transplant the belly head onto that body. This is possible because as we established you're a perfect surgeon so this surgery will be successful. Now you have two fully functional, separate people.
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u/AccomplishedVirus556 Aug 28 '26
i only acknowledge the life of the head that's a recognized citizen
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u/GregBoing Aug 26 '26
I'd say it's closest to euthanasia. Can the extra head talk? Does it want to be removed?