Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
My definition of "personhood" begins when an organism gains the ability to use language, with language being defined as the ability to use a finite number of symbols to communicate an infinite number of meanings. I don't know how else an organism could compose the advanced psychological constructs humans do without the ability to use language.
The use of language is the closest thing to a unique trait that I can think of that most humans (not all) might be said to possess. That said, bottlenose dolphins might also have the ability to use language. If they can, I will probably want them thought of as people. I would want them thought of as similar to if we found some aboriginal tribe of human beings who just so happened to like to swim a lot.
That said, my definition of a "person" does not not include babies, because they can't use language.
So no...I do not see anything special about just being human. I see special things related to traits most human have...but before the development of those traits I see nothing inherently special about being human.
I would literally consider eating a human baby, if I had to choose between that and eating an adult dolphin (at gunpoint), although I definitely wouldn't do either ordinarily.
Self-aware humans care about the rights you're talking about in ways fetuses don't. That's the primary difference between the two.
This may be the most eloquently written confession of extreme ignorance and pure evil as I have ever encountered. Congratulations. I actually had to re-read it a couple of times, because I couldn’t believe what I read the first time around.
Setting aside the extreme evil nature of “human baby eating” for a moment, let’s first examine this matter of placing such determinant value upon the ability to use language as your prerequisite for when life has value, and possesses the right to exist. There is so much wrong with this, it’s almost impossible to choose where to begin, but let’s just go with the fact that among the countless species of life on this planet, the vast majority actually do communicate with language, even if it is a language you personally don’t understand. One example might be the complex audible communication birds engage in, including several species that actually have demonstrated the ability to use human language as well as their own, which exceeds the ability (language wise) of even the most intelligent, adult humans.
Furthermore, science suggests that over all communication breaks down to 7% verbal (language), 38% vocal (grunts , groans, howls, growls, hisses, etc) and 55% visual (body language, posture, physical demonstrations). So language alone makes up only a tiny fraction of communication, even among humans. So, it’s absurd to assign such value to language alone, while ignoring the other 93%, but even more problematic given the majority of that remaining 7% that you fail to actually acknowledge as language.
Then there is a growing body of evidence which shows a prolific ability among most species of animals to communicate telepathically, not only among themselves, but also with certain humans who share that ability. While this has not reached the stage of mainstream acceptance at this point, those who delve into the evidence of this comprehensively, will be left with no other choice but to accept it as a matter of fact. There are a multitude of events in which human beings possessing the ability to communicate with animals have experienced two-way communication, leading to complex questions and answers, often of very detailed stories relating to past and current events.
When it comes to consciousness and language, it seems that the majority of humanity is totally clueless when it comes to recognizing not only the ability of most animals to communicate, but the extensive nature of their thoughts and emotions, which are every bit as complex as ours.
Now, let’s talk about the human babies you want to feature as an entree’ at your next backyard BBQ, apparently because they have yet to master language you recognize as such, and therefore have no inherent right to exist? Aside the absurdity of the proposition itself, you are wrong, as babies do use language … often referred to as “baby language”. You may not understand it, but an attentive and intuitive mother does. A baby will have a certain type of cry when they want to be held, as opposed to the “I’m hungry, feed me” cry, as well as a very distinct “EMERGENCY” cry, and mothers can tell one from the other. The baby also smiles when happy, laughs at things she finds funny, sobs with sorrow, and makes all sorts of verbalizations and audible expressions, all of which are forms of communication, using the only language the baby knows at that point in time. In fact, the very first thing a new born baby does as it takes its first breath of air outside the womb, is cry out, probably their way of saying ‘“where the hell am I”, in baby language. It’s also commonly understood that babies recognize the sound of their mother’s voice it became familiar with while inside the womb, thereby demonstrating the mental processes of memory and recognition taking place before birth.
But, based strictly on your criteria, when would these babies be safe from becoming the main ingredient in your satanic stew? At 1 year, when they manage to vocalize their first words? Or must they be able to recite Shakespeare before being taken off the diner menu?
Look, you really need a check up from the neck up, because the opinions expressed here with this nonsense about language determining the value of life, and choosing to eat human babies as an option under and contrived or hypothetical circumstances, is enough to make a psychiatrist lay down on his own couch.
This may be the most eloquently written confession of extreme ignorance and pure evil as I have ever encountered. Congratulations. I actually had to re-read it a couple of times, because I couldn’t believe what I read the first time around.
Setting aside the extreme evil nature of “human baby eating” for a moment, let’s first examine this matter of placing such determinant value upon the ability to use language as your prerequisite for when life has value, and possesses the right to exist. There is so much wrong with this, it’s almost impossible to choose where to begin, but let’s just go with the fact that among the countless species of life on this planet, the vast majority actually do communicate with language, even if it is a language you personally don’t understand. One example might be the complex audible communication birds engage in, including several species that actually have demonstrated the ability to use human language as well as their own, which exceeds the ability (language wise) of even the most intelligent, adult humans.
Furthermore, science suggests that over all communication breaks down to 7% verbal (language), 38% vocal (grunts , groans, howls, growls, hisses, etc) and 55% visual (body language, posture, physical demonstrations). So language alone makes up only a tiny fraction of communication, even among humans. So, it’s absurd to assign such value to language alone, while ignoring the other 93%, but even more problematic given the majority of that remaining 7% that you fail to actually acknowledge as language.
Then there is a growing body of evidence which shows a prolific ability among most species of animals to communicate telepathically, not only among themselves, but also with certain humans who share that ability. While this has not reached the stage of mainstream acceptance at this point, those who delve into the evidence of this comprehensively, will be left with no other choice but to accept it as a matter of fact. There are a multitude of events in which human beings possessing the ability to communicate with animals have experienced two-way communication, leading to complex questions and answers, often of very detailed stories relating to past and current events.
When it comes to consciousness and language, it seems that the majority of humanity is totally clueless when it comes to recognizing not only the ability of most animals to communicate, but the extensive nature of their thoughts and emotions, which are every bit as complex as ours.
Now, let’s talk about the human babies you want to feature as an entree’ at your next backyard BBQ, apparently because they have yet to master language you recognize as such, and therefore have no inherent right to exist? Aside the absurdity of the proposition itself, you are wrong, as babies do use language … often referred to as “baby language”. You may not understand it, but an attentive and intuitive mother does. A baby will have a certain type of cry when they want to be held, as opposed to the “I’m hungry, feed me” cry, as well as a very distinct “EMERGENCY” cry, and mothers can tell one from the other. The baby also smiles when happy, laughs at things she finds funny, sobs with sorrow, and makes all sorts of verbalizations and audible expressions, all of which are forms of communication, using the only language the baby knows at that point in time. In fact, the very first thing a new born baby does as it takes its first breath of air outside the womb, is cry out, probably their way of saying ‘“where the hell am I”, in baby language. It’s also commonly understood that babies recognize the sound of their mother’s voice it became familiar with while inside the womb, thereby demonstrating the mental processes of memory and recognition taking place before birth.
But, based strictly on your criteria, when would these babies be safe from becoming the main ingredient in your satanic stew? At 1 year, when they manage to vocalize their first words? Or must they be able to recite Shakespeare before being taken off the diner menu?
Look, you really need a check up from the neck up, because the opinions expressed here with this nonsense about language determining the value of life, and choosing to eat human babies as an option under and contrived or hypothetical circumstances, is enough to make a psychiatrist lay down on his own couch.
Yeah, that post you are referring to is chilling. I've said upthread that I'm reluctantly pro-choice, very reluctantly I might add, but some of this stuff I've seen in this thread has been jaw dropping.
I'm not saying that that poster is a sociopath as I don't want to violate TOS but there was a very odd sociopathic detachment from societal "norms" shall we say.
If were being really completely honest here, I think that the pro choice crowd basically wants to keep pregnancy from being a problem. People wanna screw around and not have to worry about raising a kid if hey don't want to.
I think that the vast majority of abortions are simply the rubber busted and I don't want a problem on my hands versus some real actual medical need to not carry a pregnancy to full term.
I say a strong argument Against it is, To Choose Life, your mom did.
This is at least the third time I've repeated this on this thread...but I think it bears repeating just because of how common a delusion the thought process you just displayed is.
We are irrational if we fear, or would view it as negative in any way whatsoever for us to have not come into existence. That's because had we never existed there would be no one in existence to be harmed by not having come into existence. We have this society-wide delusion that tells us to think about the prospect of never having existed as if it's similar to death. In reality, death and never having existed are very, very different things. To die a being had to exist first...and therefore the being could be harmed by dying.
Now, you and I did exist as fetuses, but we did not exist as beings who cared whether they existed or not, and therefore we would not have been harmed by leaving existence (so long as that lacked suffering) anymore than if we'd have never existed in any form in the first place.
I understand that involves a mind-boggling amount of abstract reasoning, but that's about the closest I think I can get to being concise about this issue, and I'm quite confident that my statements make sense. I just have a lot of difficulty figuring out how to get other people to understand that though.
It is impossible for a life form to lose anything of importance if its life is ended before it can comprehend death or the future and if the ending of its existence does not result in suffering for it though.
Quote:
Of course there are so many circumstances in a woman's life that would lead her to seek an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy and the Government should NOT be involved in that most difficult decision at all so I also believe that a woman has to have the Right to choose.
I would say until you walk in the shoes of a pregnant woman then you have no Right to tell her what she can and cannot do.
Sure but I dont think you are correct nor do I think you have made a good case for you being correct. I dont really think you are going to be able to move anyone to even briefly consider your position as it doesnt seem correct or even well thought out. I didnt want to say that since it seems you have given a lot of thought but it is just nowhere near logical for the vast majority of people.
My explanation for that is that I'm better at abstract reasoning than most people are...so I've got to figure out a way to explain things better, which is part of the reason I'm posting here: practice.
I will emphasize that I can't say most people disagree because they're dumb though...because of just how massive the number of people who disagree with me are. Even only a small minority of pro-choicers agree with me. If only one of thousands of people has an idea...that typically doesn't mean the people who don't have that idea are dumb. It just means the person with that idea needs to find a better way to express the idea.
I thank everyone on this thread who has attempted to engage in honest and effortful discussion with me.
There is no relationship between the two things. The death penalty would be for someone who has committed a horrible crime.
So are you against murder or not? You can't claim anything on a moral argument against murder being an absolute red line if you think the death sentence is justifiable. Either you say, murder is wrong 100% of the time, or you don't, or there's another reason and it isn't just that "murder is wrong".
No...life is not inherently better than death and you didn't even bother to explain your opinion about why it is better than death. Existence and non-existence are such different states that I find it difficult to compare the two. We can't say existence is better than non-existence though, because if don't exist there would be no one to benefit from existing or coming into existence.
The fact that existence can't be better than non-existence also means death is not inherently inferior to life.
It's only a simple conclusion to reach if you oversimplify things.
That you require an explanation at all, only guarantees you aren’t capable of grasping the answer.
All of life, at its very deepest core, recognizes life preferable to death, demonstrated by the instinct for self preservation. There is no need for explanation, as it is a matter which is self evident, even to the cockroach, which will instinctively try to escape being stepped on and squashed.
The question left now is why a cockroach will place more value in life, than you apparently do?
Yeah, that post you are referring to is chilling. I've said upthread that I'm reluctantly pro-choice, very reluctantly I might add, but some of this stuff I've seen in this thread has been jaw dropping.
I'm not saying that that poster is a sociopath as I don't want to violate TOS but there was a very odd sociopathic detachment from societal "norms" shall we say.
If were being really completely honest here, I think that the pro choice crowd basically wants to keep pregnancy from being a problem. People wanna screw around and not have to worry about raising a kid if hey don't want to.
I think that the vast majority of abortions are simply the rubber busted and I don't want a problem on my hands versus some real actual medical need to not carry a pregnancy to full term.
Thank for not calling me a sociopath.
I would not be at all surprised if I have sociopathic levels of emotional detachment from societal norms though. That said, the way I see it, that detachment actually lead to me caring about people more than most people do. I can see the best way to help people based on how the world actually works.
I would not be surprised if there are benevolent people just like myself, some as some of the more eccentric philosophers...some as suicide cleanup crew workers proud that that they can do a job that would harm other people so that other people wouldn't have to be harmed by that job...some working as surgeons.
I do not especially react to others suffering. That said, I donate blood routinely. I've given to the homeless...and I'd bet, on average, my actions over the course of my life have proven me to be at least as decent of a person as most people are. I do not have a strong sense of instinctive empathy. It's very weak and leaks in slowly. I'm not sure people need that though. I think a powerful imagination and a sense of intellectual/cognitive empathy is more than enough. In other words, I definitely lack the type of empathy that a husband has for his wife, or that a mother has for their child. I am, however, able to experience the type of empathy that Martin Luther King likely felt for his fellow citizens...that broader, more abstract, strategic kind of empathy. My hero is Norman Borlaug: the man who has been described as having saved a billion lives through his invention of genetically engineered wheat. That's how I want to help people...by winning that chess game.
I do not think it's a lack of instinctive empathy we should be concerned about nearly so much as a lack of creative, unemotional, Martin Luther-King like empathy. Data, from Star Trek was friendly and benign and curious...and also unemotional. His blatantly psychopathic brother Lor as the emotional one. I think that's typically how things work...although I could be wrong.
I'm as trustworthy as anyone else though. We should be worried about people who've shown a lack of empathy through harmful actions. I very much doubt we'll be able to tell who is, and who is not harmful, based on mere speech that does not directly cause harm.
That you require an explanation at all, only guarantees you aren’t capable of grasping the answer.
All of life, at its very deepest core, recognizes life preferable to death, demonstrated by the instinct for self preservation. There is no need for explanation, as it is a matter which is self evident, even to the cockroach, which will instinctively try to escape being stepped on and squashed.
The question left now is why a cockroach will place more value in life, than you apparently do?
That recognition you're talking about is merely the instinctive opposition to suffering. Without feelings of suffering...there is no opposition to death...aside from perhaps mindless reflex.
Furthermore, there's a difference between an instinctive opposition to anything and fully understanding something and having enough of a conscious knowledge of what that thing is to really know whether or not you're opposed to it.
Don't feed the agitator. That "new" poster isn't new. Same idiotic rhetoric under a new account.
Given the about of detail I've put into my posts...it boggles my mind how you can perceive me as simply an "agitator."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
