identity of the unborn

muichimotsu said:

like someone using God as a "rational" explanation for cosmology while ignoring the causal principle they affirm outside of the God concept

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What is not rational with an unmoved Mover?

redleghunter said:

Brain function is not the conscious mind.

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The mind emerges from the functioning brain as a phenomenological experience, I didn't equate the mind to brain function as something we can observe, you're putting words in my mouth

redleghunter said:

What is not rational with an unmoved Mover?

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Because it's demonstrably special pleading to make an exception to the rule you established because you want an absolute answer rather than admitting it's a paradox that we may not be able to answer conclusively

muichimotsu said:

Because it's demonstrably special pleading to make an exception to the rule you established because you want an absolute answer rather than admitting it's a paradox that we may not be able to answer conclusively

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If this is the case then why is your viability abortion position valid?

redleghunter said:

Yet children even to the age of 3 and over are dependent. They would starve to death without other human interaction and provision.

It was you who established your subjective definition of viability being independence.

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No, I corrected that, you apparently didn't read that part of my post, because it would be inconvenient to strawmanning what my position is, which is not that independence=viability, but the capacity to function biologically in the basic sense, barring minor issues that can happen (jaundice)

Pretty sure no one would knowingly establish that standard for viability and that's not even what Roe v. Wade remotely used for viability, considering the cut off point back in the 60s

redleghunter said:

If this is the case then why is your viability abortion position valid?

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Because it's not based on the strawman you applied to me. The constraint is human autonomy, not merely protecting any potential human life regardless of circumstances. Morality is not the same as cosmology, let's not muddy the waters

muichimotsu said:

No, I corrected that, you apparently didn't read that part of my post, because it would be inconvenient to strawmanning what my position is, which is not that independence=viability, but the capacity to function biologically in the basic sense, barring minor issues that can happen (jaundice)

Pretty sure no one would knowingly establish that standard for viability and that's not even what Roe v. Wade remotely used for viability, considering the cut off point back in the 60s

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No strawman required. It was your position.

You should be able now to address what your subjective point in pregnancy you consider “viable.”

muichimotsu said:

Because it's not based on the strawman you applied to me. The constraint is human autonomy, not merely protecting any potential human life regardless of circumstances. Morality is not the same as cosmology, let's not muddy the waters

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Again one either sees human beings at all stages of life as morally equal or they don’t. If they don’t then they better have a good explanation for considering some human beings as subhuman.

Robban said:

Because that is what the thread is about, the unborn,

there are differences of opinion as to whether they can be disposed of or not.

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Good thing the book of Jeremiah tells us the answer:
Jeremiah and abortion - Adam4d.com

muichimotsu said:

Again, as I pointed to another, this is a false equivalency, because you're taking a concept that applies validly to technology and trying to suggest it also applies to a metaphorical interpretation related to 2 areas that don't necessarily overlap unless you take both as valid (the body as natural and the soul as supernatural)

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Just because you say so...?

If our bodies did not have predictable mechanical qualities, medical doctors wouldn't be able to do their thing.

That computer systems operate on an integrated system of hardware & software doesn't preclude the mind/brain dichotomy from operating on the similar principles. Both software and the soul are immaterial.

Seeing massless intelligence in the IT model, we know that it can exist.

Don't forget the cloud

redleghunter said:

No strawman required. It was your position.

You should be able now to address what your subjective point in pregnancy you consider “viable.”

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No, you're being dishonest if you're not remotely looking at my post where I corrected that position, because I don't hold it now, I realized I phrased it wrong

It's not a subjective point in given medicine now that it's around 20 weeks, though I don't know a precise point because I'm not an expert.

The point can shift as we make advances, but the idea is, as I recall, the capacity to survive outside the womb in a sense that will allow you to have a meaningful quality of life, which is to say nothing before 20 weeks or so, because one would barely have all the basic organ systems developed at that point and even with medical intervention, you'll likely have serious health problems that I have to wonder if it's ethical to allow a child to be born with rather than avoiding their needless suffering in life

redleghunter said:

Again one either sees human beings at all stages of life as morally equal or they don’t. If they don’t then they better have a good explanation for considering some human beings as subhuman.

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Except that's very much a strawman again, because I'm not denying humanity, I'm denying personhood, the latter being a status that grants protections that are afforded to those who also happen to be human.

Also, moral equality is a patently vague notion that gets into problems of how you remotely can respect autonomy while also treating everyone as equally valuable, since that would mean you have to exercise some kind of balancing. If instead we spoke about moral equity and fairness, we can consider that someone trying to kill me is not the same as a hypothetical parallel universe where I'm aborted by my mother when I'm barely an embryo, because I don't remotely have the capacity to understand anything, let alone interact in terms of human rights.

I can consider an unborn entity human without it being a person and the context dictates particular regard, like when my cousins were expecting children, I didn't talk about it like one would in regards to situations where someone is not intending to be a parent, which is arguably more often than the former. To treat all life as equal and ascribe that kind of value to it, you might as well engage in nonresistant pacifism and not engage in using force at all, because you'd be equally violating the value of others in taking their life to supposedly protect other lives (except they're all equal by whatever absurd notion you appear to be spouting)

But humanity in the sense of being in the species homo sapiens as genetically unique individuals we can identify is not the same as being a person in all contexts or even something close to that.

Subhuman would be more dehumanizing in the sense that they have some capacities that are human like, but not others, but that's not what I'm doing, because we're talking about personhood rather than humanity, the latter being arguably a biological distinction that has been stretched into moral aspects that may not be pertinent when talking about an unborn entity as regards moral actions versus an infant.

A woman who becomes pregnant while taking birth control and does not wish to carry that unborn entity is not beholden morally to carry it to term because pregnancy does not make her surrender autonomy in terms of bodily control.

Sabertooth said:

Just because you say so...?

If our bodies did not have predictable mechanical qualities, medical doctors wouldn't be able to do their thing.

That computer systems operate on an integrated system of hardware & software doesn't preclude the mind/brain dichotomy from operating on the similar principles. Both software and the soul are immaterial.

Seeing massless intelligence in the IT model, we know that it can exist.

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No, because I can argue and demonstrate it. Mechanical qualities, no, predictable qualities, yes, and even that's stretching it, since we don't work like machines

The dichotomy you use is not the same because we don't quantify the mind in the same way we can quantify the brain, hardware and even software (which works on, I'm pretty sure, demonstrable and measurable principles that are pretty set, given how common software is these days)

No, software isn't immaterial, it still technically functions in a material fashion, even if it's more energy, so to speak, it's not a purely conceptual idea like the soul and consciousness/mind are.

And now you're just throwing out jargon, expecting me to just bend over to your argument rather than actually explaining that point in more detail.

Intelligence is a property of the mind, it's not a material or concrete notion in itself anymore than gravity is necessarily a thing itself, but what emerges from an object relative to mass.

You've failed to demonstrate the soul is anything more than superfluous expansion of the mind concept, which is at least cogent and able to be structured more, even if it isn't on the same level as our understanding of the brain. But the analogy of our brain to hardware and mind (or soul) to software seems overly simplistic, even given my limited understanding of computer engineering and such. The data on my computer or the data that comprises software I use is not immaterial so much as intangible in the sense that, unlike the hardware, it isn't able to be interacted with in the same way.

Immaterial is not conceptual, but the problem is as much the vague use of the words in the discussion. I don't tend to use immaterial in a manner that would suggest it's still physical in the world rather than more conceptual. But if we're going to throw in some 3rd definition involving the supernatural, that just further muddies the waters

Media weighs the same whether it contains a 3D video game, a populated business spreadsheet or nothing at all. Software is massless.

muichimotsu said:

It means you can't meaningfully be considered as such, but I kind of doubt you can present anything otherwise of this particular nature. Roe v. Wade investigated this aspect in terms of viability of the unborn and noted that once they're viable, they can reasonably be considered a person the state might have a vested interest in protecting, but the rhetoric used by pro lifers is to ignore viability and focus on superficial aspects like human DNA and such, ignoring the potential aspect and the limited nature of actually being able to meaningfully interact.

I'd just as much consider a baby born with no brain, rare as that is, as not being a person meaningfully and would argue they're a shell at best that has no quality of life. A fetus before viability is quite similar in that it will die outside of the womb and likely much quicker considering it wouldn't even have the developed organ systems or such

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It's news to me that one can't be considered a person because you're "hooked up" to someone else's metabolism. Is that a common view.

I don't see what viability has to do with it either. In a temperate environment with easy access to food you could possibly survive completely on your own from around the age of 1 or 2, I guess. But if we're talking about viability at premature birth and such, that's just a matter of how advanced medicine happens to be where you are. In other words, a premature baby (say, week 27), will be viable in Germany but not in the Congo. I don't see how that could determine whether or not one is a person and/or has a right to life.

holo said:

It's news to me that one can't be considered a person because you're "hooked up" to someone else's metabolism. Is that a common view.

I don't see what viability has to do with it either. In a temperate environment with easy access to food you could possibly survive completely on your own from around the age of 1 or 2, I guess. But if we're talking about viability at premature birth and such, that's just a matter of how advanced medicine happens to be where you are. In other words, a premature baby (say, week 27), will be viable in Germany but not in the Congo. I don't see how that could determine whether or not one is a person and/or has a right to life.

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The point is based on autonomy of a person, that you shouldn't be forced to have your body used against your will, which includes pregnancy in regards to gestating an unborn life, but extends to things like donating blood and organs, technically speaking

Legally, you aren't a person in the sense that you are independent in existing (different from independent as in not being a legal dependent, which in a manner, I still am to my parents, technically), because you're not born yet, barring the situation where you are wanted by the woman carrying you, while situations where they do not means that legally, she has the right to terminate the pregnancy

Uh, no, unless you're baby Mowgli and raised by wolves, I don't think a 1 or 2 year old can remotely survive on their own, they require care that at least a mature animal mother like a wolf can provide, but not apart from that, not sure what babies you've encountered, but I cannot say I've ever encountered even a 2 year old that would survive more than a few minutes in the wild anywhere, even somewhere mild temperature, because of wildlife and the elements in general (rain, etc)

The point is that viability determines when the state has a vested interest in protecting said life BECAUSE it can survive on its own with basic care (which is not the same as saying a baby can fend for itself, viability is more about living in the innate sense versus quality of life).

Roe v. Wade made that distinction as a reasonable compromise many people who are pro life are not opposed to if they are at least moderate in accepting that some people will make the decision and all they can do is advise, not repress rights that are not antithetical to the constitution except as they stretch life to apply to potential lives that a woman may not even be aware of until 2 weeks after conception, give or take (it's the size of the head of a pin, practically)

Sabertooth said:

Media weighs the same whether it contains a 3D video game, a populated business spreadsheet or nothing at all. Software is massless.

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Massless does not mean immaterial in the sense that it isn't in physical reality, otherwise electricity is immaterial, even if it's still protons, neutrons and electrons all behaving as they do and are material, just on a scale that means it won't work the same way as if it was an object like a computer it functions through as a medium.

The problem here seems to be terms, fundamentally. Immaterial doesn't appear to be commonly used at all in referring to thigns that have no mass, but are still measurable, demonstrable and physical/material, but spiritual in nature (which gets into a whole other discussion of what that word means)

I don't disagree that electronic media of such a nature is not the same physical media that has such specific qualities as film, etc. But the problem becomes that this appears to reduce the soul even in analogy to a measurable phenomenon, when no experiment that I'm aware of has successfully measured a soul in any sense, same as measuring any kind of effects to prayer.

Both hardware and software are things we can measure and study, but as for the soul, we cannot remotely study that in the way we study the mind, tricky as the latter can be and even less so how we study the brain by comparison, so categorically, the analogy falls apart unless you reduce the idea of soul in scale to merely being like how software functions, which is still very cognizant in a material universe, unlike the soul as something transcending it in quality.

muichimotsu said:

But the problem becomes that this appears to reduce the soul even in analogy to a measurable phenomenon, when no experiment that I'm aware of has successfully measured a soul in any sense,...

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That is why I qualified it as self-aware software. It is a hybrid of both user & software; a "ghost" in the machine.