[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?[/quote]
I think it is because people don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions and using the personhood falacy is an easy cop out to do just that. That and the fact that the bodies of the unborn are easily disposed of out of sight and out of mind.
[quote]sufiandy wrote:
Apparently abortion does not even qualify as murder, even for those from the pro life perspective. I’m not sure why that word keeps coming up in this thread.[/quote]
murder is illegal , it is not illegal , it is not murder
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 going to do my best not to tied back down to this topic exclusively…But I just have to ask you a hypothetical of your own question…
What if…Hold on to your britches, this one will be a real sci-fi feature scenario…What if human beings simply regenerated their brain, somehow, even in cases of total destruction. Some transcription/translation process that would allow the exact rebuilding of every single neural pathway without one single deviation. So, let’s say someone just cut out my brain. Knowing it, the brain, regenerates back in just mere months would you care if my body was destroyed? Sadly you wouldn’t allow the law to protect me, going by your arguments. Because my brain-person is, for the present, none-existent. It wouldn’t matter that my brain person naturally grows back in a few months, only that, presently, it hasn’t arrived yet.
You scenario just isn’t the scenario of an embryo. Not even remotely. The cut out brain scenario does more against your own argument than it does for it. It reminds the reader that the hollowed out brain box corpse is missing something the embryo has. Which is a natural continuation of its life cycle and the general rule that IT WILL have its brain and brain activities.
Which leads me to also wonder if someone where to kidnap and sedate a person in such a way as to make their brain activity resemble nothing like a “person” while that person is out and under. Can they kill the ‘thing’ so long as it stays under, and not be guilty of murder? Yeah, there’s some crimes there, but murder? How? No ‘person’ was present to even be murdered. Just a skin suit with bizarre brain activity.
What about a human newborn? Surely it isn’t a person either if an adult chimp and/or dolphin can make it look like a dimwit. It’s brain just isn’t developed enough to be considered murder. Well, unless killing a chimp, dolphin, a pig, and perhaps even the clever crow, could also be considered murder. Remember, potentiality doesn’t count.
[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.[/quote]
Many, many believed slaves weren’t people, but property to be disposed of as the owner saw fit too.
Your entire position is based on an arbitrary line in the sand.
I don’t even know what your last paragraph means. I think the definition of murder sound be amended to include human life at conception and beyond based on medical fact. Not some made up idea like personhood.
[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.[/quote]
Many, many believed slaves weren’t people, but property to be disposed of as the owner saw fit too.[/quote]
This analogy doesn’t advance any argument. Argument by analogy really never does. Analogies can illustrate but not make a point – they deal by definition with nonidentical phenomena.
[quote]
Your entire position is based on an arbitrary line in the sand.[/quote]
If that’s true, yours is too.
[quote]
I don’t even know what your last paragraph means. I think the definition of murder sound be amended to include human life at conception and beyond based on medical fact. Not some made up idea like personhood.[/quote]
But you have already said that the destruction of a brainless and thoughtless body is not murder.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
What if…Hold on to your britches, this one will be a real sci-fi feature scenario…What if human beings simply regenerated their brain, somehow, even in cases of total destruction. Some transcription/translation process that would allow the exact rebuilding of every single neural pathway without one single deviation. So, let’s say someone just cut out my brain. Knowing it, the brain, regenerates back in just mere months would you care if my body was destroyed?
[/quote]
Brilliant. Yeah, I’d have to consider it murder and adjust the definitions accordingly.
But in this case we would be retrieving a developed brain in all its development – a thing that existed will return unchanged, and is merely visiting nonexistence temporarily. A consciousness will persist, not for the first time come into being. And with continuity, no less.
To make our thought experiment even more apt, what if there is going to be a brain that grows, but it’s going to be a completely different brain? It’s going to be made of sui generis material and never, until the time of its imminent development, having existed? Not a blank version of your first brain – an actually, materially and structurally different one (because fetal brains are not pre-filled or emptied-but-identical-in-essence versions of things that have already existed – they are sui generis).
[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.[/quote]
Many, many believed slaves weren’t people, but property to be disposed of as the owner saw fit too.[/quote]
This analogy doesn’t advance any argument. Argument by analogy really never does. Analogies can illustrate but not make a point – they deal by definition with nonidentical phenomena.
[quote]
Your entire position is based on an arbitrary line in the sand.[/quote]
If that’s true, yours is too.
[quote]
I don’t even know what your last paragraph means. I think the definition of murder sound be amended to include human life at conception and beyond based on medical fact. Not some made up idea like personhood.[/quote]
But you have already said that the destruction of a brainless and thoughtless body is not murder.[/quote]
Sure it does. Slavery was once justified using the exact same illogical reasoning. It’s literally a recycled argument that we know niw is false. Absurd actually.
No, my position is based on the very beginning of a unique human life. Yours is an arbitrary point in the development of that life.
No I didn’t. I said the destruction of a brainless body, that had already developed a brain, wasn’t murder. The act of removing the brain would be murder because it is required for normal function. The same is not true of the earliest stage of human life.
Your hypothetical doesn’t carry water for the reasons already stated.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Sure it does. Slavery was once justified using the exact same illogical reasoning.[/quote]
This is demonstrably false. The “exact same…reasoning” would test the human personhood of slaves by way of heart/brain activity. It would deem them people. This is the exact reasoning, and it’s why the analogy is nonsensical.
[quote]
No, my position is based on the very beginning of a unique human life. Yours is an arbitrary point in the development of that life.[/quote]
You arbitrarily choose conception. Someone else arbitrarily chooses brain function. For example:
[quote]
No I didn’t. I said the destruction of a brainless body, that had already developed a brain, wasn’t murder. The act of removing the brain would be murder because it is required for normal function. The same is not true of the earliest stage of human life.[/quote]
You are arbitrarily claiming that some brainless, unthinking bodies can be destroyed without ethical qualm while others cannot, because these latter have the potential to in the future develop brains. This is an arbitrary claim – I can just as easily say that the potential doesn’t bear…that all that matters is what’s happening, when it’s happening, to exactly the thing it’s literally and directly happening to. That what doesn’t exist in real time cannot be wronged until it exists, and if its existence is prevented it therefore will never be capable of being wronged. Arbitrary moral maxims based on moral intuition – that’s what these are.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Sure it does. Slavery was once justified using the exact same illogical reasoning.[/quote]
This is demonstrably false. The “exact same…reasoning” would test the human personhood of slaves by way of heart/brain activity. It would deem them people. This is the exact reasoning, and it’s why the analogy is nonsensical.
[quote]
No, my position is based on the very beginning of a unique human life. Yours is an arbitrary point in the development of that life.[/quote]
You arbitrarily choose conception. Someone else arbitrarily chooses brain function. For example:
[quote]
No I didn’t. I said the destruction of a brainless body, that had already developed a brain, wasn’t murder. The act of removing the brain would be murder because it is required for normal function. The same is not true of the earliest stage of human life.[/quote]
You are arbitrarily claiming that some brainless, unthinking bodies can be destroyed without ethical qualm while other cannot, because these latter have the potential to in the future develop brains. This is an arbitrary claim – I can just as easily say that the potential doesn’t bear…that all that matters is what’s happening, when it’s happening, to exactly the thing it’s literally and directly happening to. Arbitrary moral maxims based on moral intuition – that’s what these are.[/quote]
No, it’s the same reasoning. They, slaves and zygotes, are property because real people say so. Some of the details are different, but the reasoning is the same.
There’s nothing arbitrary about the beginning of something. Human life begins at conception. That is a fact you agree with yet you cling to an arbitrary point in development as a justifaction to treat a zygote as property.
I was trying to answer your hypothetical, I won’t make that mistake again.
I really am having trouble fathoming how someone as intelligent as you clearly are can say, with such conviction, a human is a human, but not a person so that human doesn’t deserve the same protection as other humans because those humans are also people. Otherwise that human is just property. That’s just crazy to me.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Sure it does. Slavery was once justified using the exact same illogical reasoning.[/quote]
This is demonstrably false. The “exact same…reasoning” would test the human personhood of slaves by way of heart/brain activity. It would deem them people. This is the exact reasoning, and it’s why the analogy is nonsensical.
[quote]
No, my position is based on the very beginning of a unique human life. Yours is an arbitrary point in the development of that life.[/quote]
You arbitrarily choose conception. Someone else arbitrarily chooses brain function. For example:
[quote]
No I didn’t. I said the destruction of a brainless body, that had already developed a brain, wasn’t murder. The act of removing the brain would be murder because it is required for normal function. The same is not true of the earliest stage of human life.[/quote]
You are arbitrarily claiming that some brainless, unthinking bodies can be destroyed without ethical qualm while other cannot, because these latter have the potential to in the future develop brains. This is an arbitrary claim – I can just as easily say that the potential doesn’t bear…that all that matters is what’s happening, when it’s happening, to exactly the thing it’s literally and directly happening to. Arbitrary moral maxims based on moral intuition – that’s what these are.[/quote]
No, it’s the same reasoning. They, slaves and zygotes, are property because real people say so. Some of the details are different, but the reasoning is the same.[/quote]
If the details are different, nothing is the same. The reasoning is nonidentical, as are the analogues. There’s no point in continuing this part of the discussion.
[quote]
There’s nothing arbitrary about the beginning of something. Human life begins at conception. That is a fact you agree with yet you cling to an arbitrary point in development as a justifaction to treat a zygote as property.[/quote]
Human life begins at conception in that some living human tissue comes into being, and yet according to my worldview something that has never had brain function cannot be a person and its destruction cannot be murder. Your worldview is different – but good luck trying to prove to me that yours is better or truer.
[quote]
I really am having trouble fathoming how someone as intelligent as you clearly are can say, with such conviction, a human is a human, but not a person so that human doesn’t deserve the same protection as other humans because those humans are also people. Otherwise that human is just property. That’s just crazy to me. [/quote]
And it’s crazy to me that people believe brainless unthinking tissue to be a person deserving legal protection as such.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Brilliant. Yeah, I’d have to consider it murder and adjust the definitions accordingly.[/quote]
Ah, but you can’t without completely abandoning the entire position. And the reason why follows the quote below
There is no continuity. The “person,” (your “person”), literally will not exist for a few months. There is no “person” which can be murdered. According to your arguments, once a “person” does exist again, then he’ll be able to be murdered again. But during this time of non-existence there simply is no ‘person’ to be murdered. He, (myself in the scenario), is not visiting non-existence. I would simply BE non-existent. Furthermore, there needn’t be a future existence if we kill the body before the brain develops. Remember, whatever, the history, the brain does not exist NOW. So, you are not OBLIGATED to protect its, my, future existence. The potentially of its, my, future existence, isn’t supposed to count for anything. My past existence is gone, and I’m presently non-existence. I would say you need much more than some redefining. I would respectfully advise its total abandonment.
[quote]To make our thought experiment even more apt, what if there is going to be a brain that grows, but it’s going to be a completely different brain? It’s going to be made of sui generis material and never, until the time of its imminent development, having existed? Not a blank version of your first brain – an actually, materially and structurally different one (because fetal brains are not pre-filled or emptied-but-identical-in-essence versions of things that have already existed – they are sui generis).
I no longer consider this to be murder. Do you?[/quote]
In fact I do. And I believe you’ve trapped yourself into having to answer the same, having called my murder in the situation above,well, murder. Because, what’s the only thing you changed? Who the individual is that will sit up on the table months from now. Who will be on the other end of the ‘potentiality.’ Who will be on the other end of ‘non-existence.’
And what of the drugged? Of the newborn outsmarted by a crow? Will we stick a man behind bars for drunkenly swerving into another lane, killing a newborn in her little car seat? Will we do the same if he only strikes a crow?
This isn’t a discussion. This is you using words with arbitrary definitions to justify the whole sale slaughter of the defenseless. Justifaction is all evil needs to thrive smh. That’s all you’ve shown tonight.
All a person is is “some living tissue” that’s come together. Hell, we’re just an assortment of chemicals. Why protect any of it?
Interesting thing about my drugged question. I was once placed into a medically induced coma, now correct me if I am wrong but the only thing that would make me a person during that week is that there were some unnatural EEG readings. Basically, electrical signals moving a machine. Could I not replicate these signals in a way to move the machine by using a battery developed to do just that? Where was my personality? My will? Trust me, when I woke up in a totally different hospitalbeing force ‘fed’ oxygen (to my alarm,) there was no continuity for my MY person. Could I even be murdered during that week? Because there’s an electrical signal present? What if there’s that very first, earliest presence, of an electrical signal in the womb?
If I write software to sends impulses at the correct pattern to stimulate an EEG machine so as to replicate the readings from an awake adult male, is it murder to erase that software. Note, I am not talking about AI. I am talking of something less than a parrot. It simply generates random stimulus for the EEG that falls within awake human adult readings.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
Brilliant. Yeah, I’d have to consider it murder and adjust the definitions accordingly.[/quote]
Ah, but you can’t without completely abandoning the entire position. And the reason why follows the quote below
There is no continuity. The “person,” (your “person”), literally will not exist for a few months. There is no “person” which can be murdered. According to your arguments, once a “person” does exist again, then he’ll be able to be murdered again.[/quote]
No: remember, “irreversible.”
In this case, the cessation is reversible – what ceased will return. The continuity lies in the sameness of the brain, which you built into your thought experiment. What existed will continue to exist. With my alteration, there is no sameness, no reversibility, and what ceased will not return.
[quote]
But during this time of non-existence there simply is no ‘person’ to be murdered. He, (myself in the scenario), is not visiting non-existence. I would simply BE non-existent.[/quote]
But only temporarily. Irreversibility has been a part of this discussion from the outset.
[quote]
[quote]To make our thought experiment even more apt, what if there is going to be a brain that grows, but it’s going to be a completely different brain? It’s going to be made of sui generis material and never, until the time of its imminent development, having existed? Not a blank version of your first brain – an actually, materially and structurally different one (because fetal brains are not pre-filled or emptied-but-identical-in-essence versions of things that have already existed – they are sui generis).
I no longer consider this to be murder. Do you?[/quote]
In fact I do. And I believe you’ve trapped yourself into having to answer the same, having called my murder in the situation above,well, murder. Because, what’s the only thing you changed? Who the individual is that will sit up on the table months from now. Who will be on the other end of the ‘potentiality.’ Who will be on the other end of ‘non-existence.’[/quote]
Yes, and that change changes everything. Because the reversibility of your thought experiment implies the inevitable return of what ceased (and exactly what ceased), and therefore under my worldview and, indeed, per the medical fact of the definition of a person’s death, the destruction of the body is murder.
Importantly: as soon as my (I’m the body on the table now) brain is gone forever, I, as a person upon whom actions with moral weight specific to me can be performed, am gone forever (again, irreversible cessation). I am dead. This is my worldview, it isn’t unreasoned and it’s not going to be proved wrong.
Whatever will grow into the skull that used to house me – and when I say “me” I am always referring to me as a functioning human brain – has never existed, does not exist, and cannot be made to undergo irreversible cessation of activity, because irreversible cessation requires previous as well as future operation. Your thought experiment does not satisfy this requirement; mine does.
Thus, the destruction of the body is not murder, for me. Really. I won’t say I’m right and you’re wrong, but I assure you that this is a logically tenable position – that I am backed into no corners.
I’m not sure what the above means. Working human brains are what matter, whether they are gone forever or gone temporarily or have never yet existed. I’m not talking about intellect.
The me in the first thought experiment undergoes reversible cessation of brain activity. It will be reversed, and what was will, in all of its particulars, be again. To disrupt this is to murder me.
The me in the second thought experiment undergoes irreversible cessation of brain activity. Once the brain is gone, the me is gone. This is my view of the world. Once my brain – my beliefs, thoughts, likes, hatreds, memories, wishes – is permanently extinguished, I am incapable of being murdered because I’ve already been murdered. What will later grow in the skull that used to house me will be new, sui generis, and therefore logically incapable of being made to irreversibly cease activity before the onset of activity.