an abortion thread with no personal attacks

[Mouthwash]

Yes, human sentience has a value, in and of itself. This is why the person with severe retardation issues might not have as many freedoms as a 'healthy' person, but certainly retains more rights than most animals with similar cognitive capacities.

But to point out that fetuses have an 'inherent capacity for intelligence', and therefore deserve protections, is creates a weird philosophical concern. Bread has an inherent capacity for intelligence, because if you convert the calories in bread through a human digestive system, a decent proportion of those carbon atoms become integrated into a thinking, sentient system.

It is true that depending on our mental competence, the rights and privileges we have will vary (as evidenced by laws on motor vehicle operation, marriage, military service, etc...). However, it cannot be used in a context which entails certain moral conclusions, as it engages in an equivocation between positive rights and natural rights. Positive rights have to do with legal issues, which are distinct from moral issues.

Bread does not have the capacity to develop intelligence, only to be part of it's process. You're confusing yourself.

 

[Traitorfish]

Bread does not have the capacity to develop intelligence, only to be part of it's process.

I would argue that this is also true of the foetus. Conciousness is necessarily a process, a particular way in which might matter might behave, rather than a property which it simply possesses.

 

[Farm Boy]

Then life itself is necessarily a process, a particular way in which matter behaves. Are you saying bread is alive in the way a fetus is alive?

 

[Traitorfish]

No, because the bread is not behaving in a way which we would identify as "alive". The point isn't to say that "everything is concious" or "everything is alive", but to say that conciousness or life are not something that exist apart from material being.

(Oops, missed this.)

So what does that make wrestling?

If you mean that the logic by which I describe the bread-mask as becoming sentient would imply that wrestlers incorporate each other into their cognitive processes, then: yes, that seems true enough to me. I would go so far as to say that multiple bodies might act-together in such a fashion as to constitute a new subject, a process of conciousness which incorporates at least part of their "individual" processes, yet remains irreducible to its constituent bodies.

 

[warpus]

This whole alive/not alive conscious/not conscious debate is pointless.

There is no magical point at which something turns from not being a sentient human into something that is. It's a very gradual process; you'll never find a point at which it switches from one to the other.

 

[Mouthwash]

STRAWMAN STRAWMAN STRAWMAN

Stop taking my arguments out of context.

 

[Traitorfish]

This whole alive/not alive conscious/not conscious debate is pointless.

There is no magical point at which something turns from not being a sentient human into something that is. It's a very gradual process; you'll never find a point at which it switches from one to the other.

"The debate is pointless; here's how we should conduct the debate"?

Stop taking my arguments out of context.

Okay, firstly? You don't know what the word "strawman" means. At all.
Secondly, in what sense am I taking your arguments out of context?

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't think that was his goal, I think he's merely interested in a different part of the philosophy than you are perhaps Mouthwash. Maybe?

 

[ParkCungHee]

If you mean that the logic by which I describe the bread-mask as becoming sentient would imply that wrestlers incorporate each other into their cognitive processes, then: yes, that seems true enough to me. I would go so far as to say that multiple bodies might act-together in such a fashion as to constitute a new subject, a process of conciousness which incorporates at least part of their "individual" processes, yet remains irreducible to its constituent bodies.

One of the weird overlaps of radical materialism and radical idealism is the agreement that wrestling is super awesome.

 

[Leoreth]

This whole alive/not alive conscious/not conscious debate is pointless.

There is no magical point at which something turns from not being a sentient human into something that is. It's a very gradual process; you'll never find a point at which it switches from one to the other.

That's like saying all frogs are tadpoles because you can't determine a point where a tadpole ceases to be a tadpole.

Even though there is no discrete change from one into the other, there are still points where you can safely say where a foetus is sentient and where it isn't. And to me, sentience is part of what defines a person, and in turn personhood should be what defines the right to live. So this angle is very much relevant.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, there're two whole portions where the consciousness question is fairly obvious. There's a confusing couple of weeks, where the answer isn't known. And, within those weeks is a period where there actually is a vague and fuzzy translation between nonsentience and sentience.

 

[warpus]

"The debate is pointless; here's how we should conduct the debate"?

No, the debate shouldn't be about that point in time that doesn't exist... because it'll never get resolved (since it doesn't exist, etc.)

That's like saying all frogs are tadpoles because you can't determine a point where a tadpole ceases to be a tadpole.

It would be if I claimed that all humans are fetuses.

 

[timtofly]

No, because the bread is not behaving in a way which we would identify as "alive". The point isn't to say that "everything is concious" or "everything is alive", but to say that conciousness or life are not something that exist apart from material being.

(Oops, missed this.)

If you mean that the logic by which I describe the bread-mask as becoming sentient would imply that wrestlers incorporate each other into their cognitive processes, then: yes, that seems true enough to me. I would go so far as to say that multiple bodies might act-together in such a fashion as to constitute a new subject, a process of conciousness which incorporates at least part of their "individual" processes, yet remains irreducible to its constituent bodies.

Should we hook these new personas up to an artificial umbilical cord to see how long the process takes?

 

[Leoreth]

It would be if I claimed that all humans are fetuses.

So you agree that while we can't determine the point where a fetus becomes conscious, we can answer the question whether a fetus is conscious certain points?

 

[ParkCungHee]

"The debate is pointless; here's how we should conduct the debate"?

I don't think that's quite what Warpus is saying. His point is actually a good one: definitions of consciousness vary tremendously, and our technology has not reached a sufficient point to actually identify the point it begins at.

However it's not impossible to shape social policy around an unknowable. In fact, virtually all social policy accounts for some things which we lack perfect knowledge of. It seems reasonable then that a agreeable policy is one that treats the fetuses level of consciousness as an X factor.