Planned Parenthood II

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Before heart/brain activity, and per medical fact, we are not talking the death of a person – a position no one has refuted. [/quote]

What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.

I get your point in the above statement. What I don’t understand is why you have put such stock in legal / medical definitions and jargon?[/quote]

There are no legal definitions in my argument – I don’t care about legal definitions; they can change easily and only because we decide we want them to.

As for the medical and scientific, it cannot be dismissed as simple “jargon.” It isn’t jargon, anyway – it’s a fundamental determination with total bearing on this discussion. You would correctly laugh away anyone who dismissed as “medical jargon” the pro-life invocation of the scientifically unambiguous determination of an embryo as human. You cannot treat other medical facts differently.

If memory serves science once thought the universe revolved around the earth, that was scientific fact. Once upon a time medicine treated all sorts of conditions, like homosexuality, with electro shock therapy. At one time the Supreme Court upheld the notion that a black person, whether free or owned, could not be a U.S. citizen via Dredd Scott vs. Sanford.

My point is not to draw a parallel between these situations and abortion; although, I think Dredd Scott vs. Sanford is a decent parallel, but to point out how these institutions are continuously evolving because they are wrong, often and a lot.

If something is wrong, you’ve got to show it to be wrong.

So my question is, why should we accept the death of millions of the unborn every single year based on definitions these institutions have created? Shouldn’t our laws, in a civilized country such as ours, remain on the side of caution when life, a founding principle of this nation, is at stake?

The medical and the scientific are central to this discussion. They can’t simply be set aside because people used to not know how astronomical bodies operated*. If something much change, then that’s fine – but the case has to be made, scientifically. The heart and brain must be set aside as the engines of a living person, and some other discontinuity in states – the change from alive to dead, being a change, requires this direct discontinuity – must be set up as the measurements of death. Furthermore, what’s set up must have implications that are not nonsensical (to take just one of many examples, they must not call “alive” a body 3 weeks after decapitation in which there persist some deep, squirming stem cells).

• Otherwise, anyone can set aside all of it: “You want to call an embryo human, but science used to say that the sun revolved around the earth, so the institution that describes and designates “humanness” is invalid. I therefore don’t accept that it’s human.” This is what I mean when I say that we cannot rely on special pleading.[/quote]

Okay, but medicine has proven a unique human life is created at conception. So aren’t you setting aside that medical fact, central to this discussion, in favor of heart/brain activity? Again, What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.[/quote]

I am not setting it aside – I don’t dispute that an embryo is composed of living human tissue. The question, or the question that I am interested in, is whether or not the destruction of this “something clearly human” is literally murder. If it is, a person must die. You would not argue that the destruction of an adapted B lymphocyte is murder, despite the fact that it is unquestionably human, alive, and genetically unique. So the question becomes “does a person die”? The best – the only, really – way to approach this question is to investigate what it means for a person to die.

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Before heart/brain activity, and per medical fact, we are not talking the death of a person – a position no one has refuted. [/quote]

What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.

I get your point in the above statement. What I don’t understand is why you have put such stock in legal / medical definitions and jargon?[/quote]

There are no legal definitions in my argument – I don’t care about legal definitions; they can change easily and only because we decide we want them to.

As for the medical and scientific, it cannot be dismissed as simple “jargon.” It isn’t jargon, anyway – it’s a fundamental determination with total bearing on this discussion. You would correctly laugh away anyone who dismissed as “medical jargon” the pro-life invocation of the scientifically unambiguous determination of an embryo as human. You cannot treat other medical facts differently.

If memory serves science once thought the universe revolved around the earth, that was scientific fact. Once upon a time medicine treated all sorts of conditions, like homosexuality, with electro shock therapy. At one time the Supreme Court upheld the notion that a black person, whether free or owned, could not be a U.S. citizen via Dredd Scott vs. Sanford.

My point is not to draw a parallel between these situations and abortion; although, I think Dredd Scott vs. Sanford is a decent parallel, but to point out how these institutions are continuously evolving because they are wrong, often and a lot.

If something is wrong, you’ve got to show it to be wrong.

So my question is, why should we accept the death of millions of the unborn every single year based on definitions these institutions have created? Shouldn’t our laws, in a civilized country such as ours, remain on the side of caution when life, a founding principle of this nation, is at stake?

The medical and the scientific are central to this discussion. They can’t simply be set aside because people used to not know how astronomical bodies operated*. If something much change, then that’s fine – but the case has to be made, scientifically. The heart and brain must be set aside as the engines of a living person, and some other discontinuity in states – the change from alive to dead, being a change, requires this direct discontinuity – must be set up as the measurements of death. Furthermore, what’s set up must have implications that are not nonsensical (to take just one of many examples, they must not call “alive” a body 3 weeks after decapitation in which there persist some deep, squirming stem cells).

• Otherwise, anyone can set aside all of it: “You want to call an embryo human, but science used to say that the sun revolved around the earth, so the institution that describes and designates “humanness” is invalid. I therefore don’t accept that it’s human.” This is what I mean when I say that we cannot rely on special pleading.[/quote]

Okay, but medicine has proven a unique human life is created at conception. So aren’t you setting aside that medical fact, central to this discussion, in favor of heart/brain activity? Again, What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.[/quote]

I am not setting it aside – I don’t dispute that an embryo is composed of living human tissue. The question, or the question that I am interested in, is whether or not the destruction of this “something clearly human” is literally murder. If it is, a person must die. You would not argue that the destruction of an adapted B lymphocyte is murder, despite the fact that it is unquestionably human, alive, and genetically unique. So the question becomes “does a person die”? The best – the only, really – way to approach this question is to investigate what it means for a person to die.[/quote]

A B lymphocyte is not unique in the same sense we are talking. It might be a unique type of cell, but it is distinctly part of a single organism and every human organism has them. The combination of a unique type of human cell from the mother (the egg) and a unique type of human cell from the father (sperm) does not create a unique type of cell belonging to the mother or the father. Rather it is the creation of a distinctly unique and entirely different human being.

The idea that a “person” dies when brain activity ends so a “person” begins when brain (or heart) function begins, imo, is illogical. As I said before, at death (brain cessation) the cells stop replicating and they ceases to function. A zygote, a unique human life, replicates and functions pre-brain wave function. So it’s human life, it’s growing and functioning properly, and it will (most of the time) develop brain / heart function. The idea that this entity is not a “person” and therefore it is okay for it to be killed by a third party without the legal protection it’s more developed self would have is honestly preposterous. It is not just “living human tissue” it is a unique human life.

The question should not be “does a person die?” The question should be, should the law protect against the unlawful killing of a unique human life by a third party? My answer is yes. Absolutely.

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Before heart/brain activity, and per medical fact, we are not talking the death of a person – a position no one has refuted. [/quote]

What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.

I get your point in the above statement. What I don’t understand is why you have put such stock in legal / medical definitions and jargon?[/quote]

There are no legal definitions in my argument – I don’t care about legal definitions; they can change easily and only because we decide we want them to.

As for the medical and scientific, it cannot be dismissed as simple “jargon.” It isn’t jargon, anyway – it’s a fundamental determination with total bearing on this discussion. You would correctly laugh away anyone who dismissed as “medical jargon” the pro-life invocation of the scientifically unambiguous determination of an embryo as human. You cannot treat other medical facts differently.

If memory serves science once thought the universe revolved around the earth, that was scientific fact. Once upon a time medicine treated all sorts of conditions, like homosexuality, with electro shock therapy. At one time the Supreme Court upheld the notion that a black person, whether free or owned, could not be a U.S. citizen via Dredd Scott vs. Sanford.

My point is not to draw a parallel between these situations and abortion; although, I think Dredd Scott vs. Sanford is a decent parallel, but to point out how these institutions are continuously evolving because they are wrong, often and a lot.

If something is wrong, you’ve got to show it to be wrong.

So my question is, why should we accept the death of millions of the unborn every single year based on definitions these institutions have created? Shouldn’t our laws, in a civilized country such as ours, remain on the side of caution when life, a founding principle of this nation, is at stake?

The medical and the scientific are central to this discussion. They can’t simply be set aside because people used to not know how astronomical bodies operated*. If something much change, then that’s fine – but the case has to be made, scientifically. The heart and brain must be set aside as the engines of a living person, and some other discontinuity in states – the change from alive to dead, being a change, requires this direct discontinuity – must be set up as the measurements of death. Furthermore, what’s set up must have implications that are not nonsensical (to take just one of many examples, they must not call “alive” a body 3 weeks after decapitation in which there persist some deep, squirming stem cells).

• Otherwise, anyone can set aside all of it: “You want to call an embryo human, but science used to say that the sun revolved around the earth, so the institution that describes and designates “humanness” is invalid. I therefore don’t accept that it’s human.” This is what I mean when I say that we cannot rely on special pleading.[/quote]

Okay, but medicine has proven a unique human life is created at conception. So aren’t you setting aside that medical fact, central to this discussion, in favor of heart/brain activity? Again, What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.[/quote]

I am not setting it aside – I don’t dispute that an embryo is composed of living human tissue. The question, or the question that I am interested in, is whether or not the destruction of this “something clearly human” is literally murder. If it is, a person must die. You would not argue that the destruction of an adapted B lymphocyte is murder, despite the fact that it is unquestionably human, alive, and genetically unique. So the question becomes “does a person die”? The best – the only, really – way to approach this question is to investigate what it means for a person to die.[/quote]

A B lymphocyte is not unique in the same sense we are talking. It might be a unique type of cell, but it is distinctly part of a single organism and every human organism has them. The combination of a unique type of human cell from the mother (the egg) and a unique type of human cell from the father (sperm) does not create a unique type of cell belonging to the mother or the father. Rather it is the creation of a distinctly unique and entirely different human being.[/quote]

A B cell with DNA different from that of its host is exactly that – a distinctly unique and entirely different (different DNA) human (the DNA is human) being (it is alive).

[quote]
The idea that a “person” dies when brain activity ends so a “person” begins when brain (or heart) function begins, imo, is illogical.[/quote]

That is an invalid restatement of the valid argument. The latter looks like this:

If a person dies only when heart/brain activity irreversibly ceases, a person cannot die without heart/brain activity having begun, because it is logically impossible for something to cease without first beginning to happen. What specifically do you deny in the previous sentence? I’m asking because I literally don’t know.

[smh_23]

More generally, the histrionics that (always) flood these debates serve no purpose.

Contrary to what both sides claim, these questions do not have easy or simple answers.

Contrary to what people hereabouts seem to think, it is entirely unclear to many of us that a brainless organism can be, in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses, a person. In fact, those of us who don’t believe in souls – and I hate to be the one to break the news, but if you’re going to push the idea of a soul as the basis for good legislation, you’ve got a hell of a thing to evidence – believe that what makes us us is the human brain. According to my intuition and my not-unconsidered philosophical understanding of myself, you can switch out my hand and I’m still smh the person. Switch out my heart, my lungs, my bones, my skin, and my face…and I’m still smh the person, whether I look different or not. If, on the other hand, I were deprived of my brain – my thoughts and memories and proclivities and attachments and desires – with the body that used to house my brain still functioning normally, that body could be destroyed without any person having been murdered. You may disagree – it doesn’t bother me – but you certainly cannot tell me I’m wrong without evidence, and if this disagreement is the basis for an accusation of genocide, the accusation is ludicrous and can be dismissed as easily as it’s lodged.

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Before heart/brain activity, and per medical fact, we are not talking the death of a person – a position no one has refuted. [/quote]

What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.

I get your point in the above statement. What I don’t understand is why you have put such stock in legal / medical definitions and jargon?[/quote]

There are no legal definitions in my argument – I don’t care about legal definitions; they can change easily and only because we decide we want them to.

As for the medical and scientific, it cannot be dismissed as simple “jargon.” It isn’t jargon, anyway – it’s a fundamental determination with total bearing on this discussion. You would correctly laugh away anyone who dismissed as “medical jargon” the pro-life invocation of the scientifically unambiguous determination of an embryo as human. You cannot treat other medical facts differently.

If memory serves science once thought the universe revolved around the earth, that was scientific fact. Once upon a time medicine treated all sorts of conditions, like homosexuality, with electro shock therapy. At one time the Supreme Court upheld the notion that a black person, whether free or owned, could not be a U.S. citizen via Dredd Scott vs. Sanford.

My point is not to draw a parallel between these situations and abortion; although, I think Dredd Scott vs. Sanford is a decent parallel, but to point out how these institutions are continuously evolving because they are wrong, often and a lot.

If something is wrong, you’ve got to show it to be wrong.

So my question is, why should we accept the death of millions of the unborn every single year based on definitions these institutions have created? Shouldn’t our laws, in a civilized country such as ours, remain on the side of caution when life, a founding principle of this nation, is at stake?

The medical and the scientific are central to this discussion. They can’t simply be set aside because people used to not know how astronomical bodies operated*. If something much change, then that’s fine – but the case has to be made, scientifically. The heart and brain must be set aside as the engines of a living person, and some other discontinuity in states – the change from alive to dead, being a change, requires this direct discontinuity – must be set up as the measurements of death. Furthermore, what’s set up must have implications that are not nonsensical (to take just one of many examples, they must not call “alive” a body 3 weeks after decapitation in which there persist some deep, squirming stem cells).

• Otherwise, anyone can set aside all of it: “You want to call an embryo human, but science used to say that the sun revolved around the earth, so the institution that describes and designates “humanness” is invalid. I therefore don’t accept that it’s human.” This is what I mean when I say that we cannot rely on special pleading.[/quote]

Okay, but medicine has proven a unique human life is created at conception. So aren’t you setting aside that medical fact, central to this discussion, in favor of heart/brain activity? Again, What is it the death of if not a person? Something clearly human dies.[/quote]

I am not setting it aside – I don’t dispute that an embryo is composed of living human tissue. The question, or the question that I am interested in, is whether or not the destruction of this “something clearly human” is literally murder. If it is, a person must die. You would not argue that the destruction of an adapted B lymphocyte is murder, despite the fact that it is unquestionably human, alive, and genetically unique. So the question becomes “does a person die”? The best – the only, really – way to approach this question is to investigate what it means for a person to die.[/quote]

A B lymphocyte is not unique in the same sense we are talking. It might be a unique type of cell, but it is distinctly part of a single organism and every human organism has them. The combination of a unique type of human cell from the mother (the egg) and a unique type of human cell from the father (sperm) does not create a unique type of cell belonging to the mother or the father. Rather it is the creation of a distinctly unique and entirely different human being.[/quote]

A B cell with DNA different from that of its host is exactly that – a distinctly unique and entirely different (different DNA) human (the DNA is human) being (it is alive).

The idea that a “person” dies when brain activity ends so a “person” begins when brain (or heart) function begins, imo, is illogical.[/quote]

That is an invalid restatement of the valid argument. The latter looks like this:

If a person dies only when heart/brain activity irreversibly ceases, a person cannot die without heart/brain activity having begun, because it is logically impossible for something to cease without first beginning to happen. What specifically do you deny in the previous sentence? I’m asking because I literally don’t know.

A B cell is not a distinct human being in and of itself. A Zygote is. A B cell will never type on this forum like a zygote could eventually.

The entire line about personhood is illogical. A living human being is killed during an abortion. It ceases to exist, person or not, at that time. Whether it’s a person or not is 100% semantics. A unique human being is killed during an abortion, period. Why does that unique life not deserve protection under the law?

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
More generally, the histrionics that (always) flood these debates serve no purpose.

Contrary to what both sides claim, these questions do not have easy or simple answers.

Contrary to what people hereabouts seem to think, it is entirely unclear to many of us that a brainless organism can be, in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses, a person. In fact, those of us who don’t believe in souls – and I hate to be the one to break the news, but if you’re going to push the idea of a soul as the basis for good legislation, you’ve got a hell of a thing to evidence – believe that what makes us us is the human brain. According to my intuition and my not-unconsidered philosophical understanding of myself, you can switch out my hand and I’m still smh the person. Switch out my heart, my lungs, my bones, my skin, and my face…and I’m still smh the person, whether I look different or not. If, on the other hand, I were deprived of my brain – my thoughts and memories and proclivities and attachments and desires – with the body that used to house my brain still functioning normally, that body could be destroyed without any person having been murdered. You may disagree – it doesn’t bother me – but you certainly cannot tell me I’m wrong without evidence, and if this disagreement is the basis for an accusation of genocide, the accusation is ludicrous and can be dismissed as easily as it’s lodged.[/quote]

So shouldn’t we be on the safe side and protect them?

[anon50325502]

More generally, if it’s a difficult question and undecided situation, shouldn’t we side with the argument that potentially saves millions of loves over the argument that potentially kills millions of lives?

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
A B cell is not a distinct human being in and of itself. A Zygote is. A B cell will never type on this forum like a zygote could eventually.[/quote]

It is distinct, it is human, and it “is.” In and of itself. Whether or not it could eventually type on a computer is a new criteria added just now by you, and to me it’s irrelevant. We did the teleology thing earlier. It doesn’t matter though, because…

[quote]
The entire line about personhood is illogical. A living human being is killed during an abortion. It ceases to exist, person or not, at that time. Whether it’s a person or not is 100% semantics. A unique human being is killed during an abortion, period. Why does that unique life not deserve protection under the law?[/quote]

“Person or not” is not semantics. The question I’m concerned with is about murder, because that’s what we keep hearing that abortion is. Murder requires a person.

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
A B cell is not a distinct human being in and of itself. A Zygote is. A B cell will never type on this forum like a zygote could eventually.[/quote]

It is distinct, it is human, and it “is.” In and of itself. Whether or not it could eventually type on a computer is a new criteria added just now by you, and to me it’s irrelevant. We did the teleology thing earlier. It doesn’t matter though, because…

[quote]
The entire line about personhood is illogical. A living human being is killed during an abortion. It ceases to exist, person or not, at that time. Whether it’s a person or not is 100% semantics. A unique human being is killed during an abortion, period. Why does that unique life not deserve protection under the law?[/quote]

“Person or not” is not semantics. The question I’m concerned with is about murder, because that’s what we keep hearing that abortion is. Murder requires a person.[/quote]

I’m certainly no expert on B cells, but they do not appear to be unique in the same sense as a zygote.

Of course it’s semantic Smh. “Murder” is a legal construct, aka legal jargon, which means it can be amended to include everytjing after conception as it should.

A unique human life is killed during an abortion. You will never ever convince me that that shouldn’t be considered murder the vast majority of the time.

[anon50325502]

A B cell is a part of an entity. A zygote is its own entity.

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
More generally, the histrionics that (always) flood these debates serve no purpose.

Contrary to what both sides claim, these questions do not have easy or simple answers.

Contrary to what people hereabouts seem to think, it is entirely unclear to many of us that a brainless organism can be, in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses, a person. In fact, those of us who don’t believe in souls – and I hate to be the one to break the news, but if you’re going to push the idea of a soul as the basis for good legislation, you’ve got a hell of a thing to evidence – believe that what makes us us is the human brain. According to my intuition and my not-unconsidered philosophical understanding of myself, you can switch out my hand and I’m still smh the person. Switch out my heart, my lungs, my bones, my skin, and my face…and I’m still smh the person, whether I look different or not. If, on the other hand, I were deprived of my brain – my thoughts and memories and proclivities and attachments and desires – with the body that used to house my brain still functioning normally, that body could be destroyed without any person having been murdered. You may disagree – it doesn’t bother me – but you certainly cannot tell me I’m wrong without evidence, and if this disagreement is the basis for an accusation of genocide, the accusation is ludicrous and can be dismissed as easily as it’s lodged.[/quote]

So shouldn’t we be on the safe side and protect them? [/quote]

Someone who believes a brainless organism to be not a person in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses would emphatically say no.

I’m curious, what I said above – if you substitute usmccds423 for smh in the hypothetical in which the brain is removed and forever destroyed, would you consider yourself to have been murdered by someone (this person had nothing to do with the removal of your brain) who destroyed the body left behind?

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
A B cell is not a distinct human being in and of itself. A Zygote is. A B cell will never type on this forum like a zygote could eventually.[/quote]

It is distinct, it is human, and it “is.” In and of itself. Whether or not it could eventually type on a computer is a new criteria added just now by you, and to me it’s irrelevant. We did the teleology thing earlier. It doesn’t matter though, because…

[quote]
The entire line about personhood is illogical. A living human being is killed during an abortion. It ceases to exist, person or not, at that time. Whether it’s a person or not is 100% semantics. A unique human being is killed during an abortion, period. Why does that unique life not deserve protection under the law?[/quote]

“Person or not” is not semantics. The question I’m concerned with is about murder, because that’s what we keep hearing that abortion is. Murder requires a person.[/quote]

I’m certainly no expert on B cells, but they do not appear to be unique in the same sense as a zygote.

Of course it’s semantic Smh. “Murder” is a legal construct, aka legal jargon, which means it can be amended to include everytjing after conception as it should.

A unique human life is killed during an abortion. You will never ever convince me that that shouldn’t be considered murder the vast majority of the time.[/quote]

It isn’t semantic. You and I are this very minute arguing about murder philosophically, morally. If this were a semantic argument we could just open a dictionary. That’s not what we’re doing.

Regarding your last two lines, they’re well-put. My answer is to ask you to look at my last post, the hypothetical. Is that murder?

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
A B cell is not a distinct human being in and of itself. A Zygote is. A B cell will never type on this forum like a zygote could eventually.[/quote]

It is distinct, it is human, and it “is.” In and of itself. Whether or not it could eventually type on a computer is a new criteria added just now by you, and to me it’s irrelevant. We did the teleology thing earlier. It doesn’t matter though, because…

[quote]
The entire line about personhood is illogical. A living human being is killed during an abortion. It ceases to exist, person or not, at that time. Whether it’s a person or not is 100% semantics. A unique human being is killed during an abortion, period. Why does that unique life not deserve protection under the law?[/quote]

“Person or not” is not semantics. The question I’m concerned with is about murder, because that’s what we keep hearing that abortion is. Murder requires a person.[/quote]

I’m certainly no expert on B cells, but they do not appear to be unique in the same sense as a zygote.

Of course it’s semantic Smh. “Murder” is a legal construct, aka legal jargon, which means it can be amended to include everytjing after conception as it should.

A unique human life is killed during an abortion. You will never ever convince me that that shouldn’t be considered murder the vast majority of the time.[/quote]

It isn’t semantic. You and I are this very minute arguing about murder philosophically, morally. If this were a semantic argument we could just open a dictionary. That’s not what we’re doing.

Regarding your last two lines, they’re well-put. My answer is to ask you to look at my last post, the hypothetical. Is that murder?[/quote]

Murder is based on legal jargon, which is all about semantics. Look at any argument over a SCOTUS ruling.

I can’t really answer your hypothetical because, to my knowledge, you cannot remove the brain, once it’s been developed, and the body function properly. Regardless, the parallel doesn’t equate because a zygote’s function is to develop into a fetus, which develops a brain. A brainless body doesn’t occur naturally and if it does the entity dies naturally.

Your Hypothetical is unnatural and impossible as far as I know as opposed to the real life scenario that actually occurs.

Anyway, my argument has always been we should protect unique human life not this arbitrary idea of what a person is.

[anon50325502]

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:
More generally, the histrionics that (always) flood these debates serve no purpose.

Contrary to what both sides claim, these questions do not have easy or simple answers.

Contrary to what people hereabouts seem to think, it is entirely unclear to many of us that a brainless organism can be, in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses, a person. In fact, those of us who don’t believe in souls – and I hate to be the one to break the news, but if you’re going to push the idea of a soul as the basis for good legislation, you’ve got a hell of a thing to evidence – believe that what makes us us is the human brain. According to my intuition and my not-unconsidered philosophical understanding of myself, you can switch out my hand and I’m still smh the person. Switch out my heart, my lungs, my bones, my skin, and my face…and I’m still smh the person, whether I look different or not. If, on the other hand, I were deprived of my brain – my thoughts and memories and proclivities and attachments and desires – with the body that used to house my brain still functioning normally, that body could be destroyed without any person having been murdered. You may disagree – it doesn’t bother me – but you certainly cannot tell me I’m wrong without evidence, and if this disagreement is the basis for an accusation of genocide, the accusation is ludicrous and can be dismissed as easily as it’s lodged.[/quote]

So shouldn’t we be on the safe side and protect them? [/quote]

Someone who believes a brainless organism to be not a person in all the relevant moral and philosophical senses would emphatically say no.

I’m curious, what I said above – if you substitute usmccds423 for smh in the hypothetical in which the brain is removed and forever destroyed, would you consider yourself to have been murdered by someone (this person had nothing to do with the removal of your brain) who destroyed the body left behind?[/quote]

I’m not a philosopher smh. I’m a pretty simple guy. I believe in protecting those that can’t protect themselves.

Sure the person that removed my brain, assuming it was against my will, would be the murderer. The guy at the crematorium was just doing his job, but that is because the removal of my brain ended normal function for me. It is still me though, it’s still my body with my cells and unique DNA. A zygote’s normal function doesn’t revolve around the brain. It’s to develop into a fetus and then into a baby and so on and so forth. Abortion ends that development. It ends the natural process. I believe the vast majority of the time it should be illegal to end that devopment unnaturally.

[anon50325502]

Debating philosophy is great Smh, but at the end of the day when we stop this back and forth, millions of living human beings will still be killed this year. If this happened in Syria or South Africa or Detroit we’d be up in arms about a solution, but not in this case, why do you think that is?

[smh_23]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Debating philosophy is great Smh, but at the end of the day when we stop this back and forth, millions of living human beings will still be killed this year. If this happened in Syria or South Africa or Detroit we’d be up in arms about a solution, but not in this case, why do you think that is?[/quote]

Undoubtedly because many, many people agree with us in believing that the destruction of a brainless and unthinking human organism composed of living tissue is not a sufficient condition for murder.

You still think it ought to be illegal if the unthinking organism will under normal circumstances develop a brain and come to think – but you are no longer invoking murder, and whatever you do invoke in support of this contention will be weaker and open to serious criticisms.

[sufiandy]

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Debating philosophy is great Smh, but at the end of the day when we stop this back and forth, millions of living human beings will still be killed this year. If this happened in Syria or South Africa or Detroit we’d be up in arms about a solution, but not in this case, why do you think that is?[/quote]

Why do you think that is? I already know the reason is because many people think like me and smh, but you think we are wrong. So is your answer just that too many in this world are wrong, or is it something else?

[smh_23]

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]smh_23 wrote:

Contrary to what both sides claim, these questions do not have easy or simple answers.

[/quote]

With that in mind, the wise exercise caution. The prudent play it safe.

The careless say, “What the hell, there’s no easy or simple answer so we should err on the side of killing the unique human life.” That’s nonsensical to the nth degree.
[/quote]

Difficult and complicated =/= nonexistent, let’s throw our hands up.