Abortion song

[KalithAlur]

anyway, this sort of "unconditional love" fits my definition of "one conditional love". The baby loves its mother because its mother, and nothing else influences against or for the baby's love.

unconditional love is even more beautiful, I think.

try this exercise: love unconditionally. That is, love without a "why".

Well, even then, you could say, "I had a why, I was trying your experiment." Maybe.

The closest you can come to "unconditional love" may happen in many forms: a spontaneous feeling of love generated by chaos, a somewhat spontaneous feeling of love generated by chance circumstance, and "Love under will," loving because of your making a conscious decision to feel love.

even a chaos-inspired love isn't unconditional to the extent the love still resulted from a cause (a paradoxically random cause, or an acausal cause, in other words), meaning certain conditions were required to produce said love,

so perhaps unconditional love doesn't exist, and a better phrase for what I was describing would be "attachment-free love".

 

[WatersMoon110]

also, the first definition of sentience provided by dictionary.com is as follows:

capacity for sensation or feeling.

the rest of the definitions tend to be in agreement with this definition.

but for your own purposes, I'm fine with you using any definition you want.

I'd always associated sentience with intelligence and being self aware, but as my Philosophy of AI class taught me, it is just about being able to perceive pain (and maybe pleasure).

This could be shown to be present in the third trimester, though it is unlikely that it is present in an unborn human before around 26 weeks, when the brain is finishing setting up (ahh! my link to the article isn't working, I'll try to find a working one and edit it in later - the Wiki article mentions this, though). Some doctors don't believe that this actually happens until sometime after birth (though I am not sure if I believe this, as I am against late-term abortions other than those to save the life of the woman involved). I'm assuming that such doctors believe that reaction to stimulus is reflexive, like the unborn human who curled its hand over the finger of the doctor preforming life-saving surgery on it.

However, to me, it really seems unlikely that unborn humans are capably of feeling pain before the thalamocortical connections are developed, despite some evidence that unborn humans will move in response to "noxious stimuli" (isn't that a great phrase?). Connections begin developing, I think, around 10 weeks, and are fully formed at around 26 weeks.

The majority of abortions are done before 12 weeks, and over half of abortions are done before 9 weeks, which is before almost anyone believes that unborn humans are capable of feeling pain.

 

[KalithAlur]

EnemyParty, what gives an individual rights equivalent of those of a person (ethically, not legalistically or dogmatically) ?

abstracting reasoning ability / language manipulation?

 

[EnemyPartyII]

EnemyParty, what gives an individual rights equivalent of those of a person (ethically, not legalistically or dogmatically) ?

abstracting reasoning ability / language manipulation?

I say "awareness of self" is the ultimate foundation for one to be considered a being relevant to any sort of ethical framework

 

[WatersMoon110]

I say "awareness of self" is the ultimate foundation for one to be considered a being relevant to any sort of ethical framework

But this doesn't happen in born humans until, at the earliest, the crawling stage (when the child is capable of recognizing themself in a mirror, one assumes from behavior). Also, this is present in other mammals, like dolphins, many primates, and possibly elephants, but probably isn't ever achieved in most other animals. Does this mean that such organisms are never "relevant to any sort of ethical framework"? Because I would greatly disagree with that.

 

[KalithAlur]

feral humans have no such awareness, because they developed without learning conceptual thought (language, usually).

is it as acceptable to kill a feral human as, say, a cow or a fetus?

 

[WatersMoon110]

feral humans have no such awareness, because they developed without learning conceptual thought (language, usually).

is it as acceptable to kill a feral human as, say, a cow or a fetus?

At least half, of surviving feral humans were stranded well into their childhood (3 to 5 years), I think (though there have not been too many feral humans), and so would have lived long enough with humans to have developed some language and self-awareness.

 

[EnemyPartyII]

But this doesn't happen in born humans until, at the earliest, the crawling stage (when the child is capable of recognizing themself in a mirror, one assumes from behavior). Also, this is present in other mammals, like dolphins, many primates, and possibly elephants, but probably isn't ever achieved in most other animals. Does this mean that such organisms are never "relevant to any sort of ethical framework"? Because I would greatly disagree with that.

No, I believe a great many animals display SOME degree of self awareness... most mammals, many birds, even some fish, amphibians and reptiles, and I blieve they ARE all worthy of ethical treatment... but the same thing about development applies... killing an embryonic animal is different to killing a fully devloped one

 

[EnemyPartyII]

feral humans have no such awareness, because they developed without learning conceptual thought (language, usually).

is it as acceptable to kill a feral human as, say, a cow or a fetus?

feral humans display some form of self awareness... but the level MAY be different to that of other contemporaries of the same age... its an interesting field of research, however the subject matter is vanishingly small and, due to the nature of the cause, absolutely impossible to reproduce in a scientifically observable environment with any semblance of ethical acceptibility

 

[KalithAlur]

i'm not sure i'm understanding your definition of "self awareness".

if something happens to you, and you'r aware of it, aren't you aware of that aspect of yourself?

if an emotionless robot learns to interpret itself, but has no emotional capacity, not only wouldn't it fit the dictionary definition of sentience, but it would also gain absolutely zero from having rights. but it would be self aware.

 

[WatersMoon110]

No, I believe a great many animals display SOME degree of self awareness... most mammals, many birds, even some fish, amphibians and reptiles, and I blieve they ARE all worthy of ethical treatment... but the same thing about development applies... killing an embryonic animal is different to killing a fully devloped one

I quite agree that all animals are deserving of ethical treatment and that killing an embryonic organism is different from killing a fully developed one.

However, awareness of self is, to the best of my knowledge, determined with a mirror test (that is, being seen, though behavior, to be recognizing one's self in a mirror - dolphins will use a mirror to see the parts of their body that they can't normally see) and very few non-human animals are seen to pass this test.

 

[WatersMoon110]

i'm not sure i'm understanding your definition of "self awareness".

if something happens to you, and you'r aware of it, aren't you aware of that aspect of yourself?

if an emotionless robot learns to interpret itself, but has no emotional capacity, not only wouldn't it fit the dictionary definition of sentience, but it would also gain absolutely zero from having rights. but it would be self aware.

Learns on its own or is directly programmed to? Eh...probably shouldn't go offtopic anymore than necessary, but I, personally, think that for a robot or computer program to be actually aware of itself it would need to be able to have something like emotions.

 

[EnemyPartyII]

I quite agree that all animals are deserving of ethical treatment and that killing an embryonic organism is different from killing a fully developed one.

However, awareness of self is, to the best of my knowledge, determined with a mirror test (that is, being seen, though behavior, to be recognizing one's self in a mirror - dolphins will use a mirror to see the parts of their body that they can't normally see) and very few non-human animals are seen to pass this test.

the mirror test is part of it, though there are other similar tests.

There are also problems with the test... for example, how do you tell if an octopus recognises itself?

 

[KalithAlur]

I don't see why.

rare is the moment of true human apathy, far more common is boredom mislabeled as apathy.

but an apathetic human goes on learning as new experiences accumulate, and can even read books and write up an analysis.

rather than the robot being inspired by emotions, program the robot to self-program... but you don't even have to go that far. program the robot to interpret itself, and spit out a self-analysis.

 

[WatersMoon110]

the mirror test is part of it, though there are other similar tests.

There are also problems with the test... for example, how do you tell if an octopus recognises itself?

Good point. Octopi are very intelligent (especially for invertebrates), but I don't know if they would pass a mirror test or not. I suppose one would have to know what normal octopus behavior is when one octopus meets an unknown octopus, and see if there is a difference when an octopus is confronted with an "octopus in the mirror" and what that difference is.

Having owned a few pet turtles, we had a male who would attempt to "charge" the mirror, seeing a rival male in it, and so I would say that turtles don't really seem self aware, but I still believe they deserve some ethical rights.

 

[KalithAlur]

i still don't feel like "self aware" has been defined properly, nor the ethical importance of being "self aware".

indeed, I would go so far as to say lack of self awareness might be a virtue. What if my awareness of my self is no different from my awareness of the rest of my surroundings, and looking at my arm is no different from looking at a tree branch? isn't this realism, if you think about it hard enuf?

but i consider the definitions of "self awareness" far too vague to know whether my comments are valid

 

[EnemyPartyII]

I don't see why.

rare is the moment of true human apathy, far more common is boredom mislabeled as apathy.

but an apathetic human goes on learning as new experiences accumulate, and can even read books and write up an analysis.

rather than the robot being inspired by emotions, program the robot to self-program... but you don't even have to go that far. program the robot to interpret itself, and spit out a self-analysis.

ah, well thats the great conundrem... is inteligence built top down, or bottom up? you may also like to look into the so called "hard question" of sentience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Psychology

 

[WatersMoon110]

i still don't feel like "self aware" has been defined properly, nor the ethical importance of being "self aware".

indeed, I would go so far as to say lack of self awareness might be a virtue. What if my awareness of my self is no different from my awareness of the rest of my surroundings, and looking at my arm is no different from looking at a tree branch? isn't this realism, if you think about it hard enuf?

but i consider the definitions of "self awareness" far too vague to know whether my comments are valid

I would define being "self aware" as knowing that one is an individual, and being able to recognize one's self in a mirror (passing the "mirror test") or other reflective surface. This was the definition used in my class, as well.

It is theorized that young children are not really aware that they are different from everyone else, and so often ascribe their emotions and experiences to all other people as well.

A robot programmed to monitor its own workings would not fit the definition of "self awareness" that I use, since it does not actually recognize that it is a separate entity, or an entity at all. It would just be programmed to spit out a diagnostic on itself, not unlike new cars (and refrigerators still in development).

 

[KalithAlur]

wel, why'd you put such ethical importance on the notion of "self awareness"?

why's that give you more rights?

wouldn't it be just as good to never reflect on yourself, and always help others, simply because you were never once struck with self-curiosity, but you do feel love and compassion and hunger and pain ect)?

 

[EnemyPartyII]

wel, why'd you put such ethical importance on the notion of "self awareness"?

why's that give you more rights?

wouldn't it be just as good to never reflect on yourself, and always help others, simply because you were never once struck with self-curiosity, but you do feel love and compassion and hunger and pain ect)?

because if you aren't self aware, and get slowly lowered into a woodchipper, you wouldn't care.

A self aware entity would