posted 11-23-2000 01:17 PM               

Many philosophers today are materialists or physicalists -- the human life just is a set of physical processes; thoughts and feelings and sensations are patterns of neurons firing and synaptic connections. I admit I find that an unappealing concept. I am, however, also unpersuaded by dualists who suppose the physical world is made of one kind of stuff and the world of thoughts and thinking beings is made of another kind of stuff altogether. My rough position is that the universe is made up of one kind of substance, but it has properties and abilities far beyond that which we currently ascribe to quarks, atoms and molecules.

But that's something of a side question to exactly what it means to be human and to be alive. If you believe that there's such a thing as a soul, some I-don't-know-quite-what-it-is that makes us unique and distinctive beings, then I think this becomes a tricky question -- by identifying the core of human-ness with something other than, say, one's genetic code, it becomes conceivable that a body might exist without a soul. This is the core of our concept of brain-death, I think -- that what made the person that person is gone, even if the heart keeps pumping. Of course, if you flip that around to the other side, you get the question of when exactly a soul comes to be attached to a human being. I'm coming to believe that this probably isn't until around the time the brain starts to function, or perhaps even sometime AFTER birth when the infant has experienced enough to begin having enough experience to begin the process of interpreting the world . . . I'm still trying to work it all out in my head, because some of the implications are a bit sticky, which is why I think this is definitely a topic worth discussing.

There's also the question of how each human being relates to society; I myself don't feel it's possible to be human without a society, because I don't think we can learn to communicate and interact and do all of the things that are so fundamental to humanity if we are totally isolated. That brings up the question of how individuals relate to society, and whether "rights" are social constructions or pre-existing entities possessed by all persons. That last one may be a topic for another thread, so I'll leave things be for now.

(Edited to fix errors and add the last paragraph.)

posted 11-27-2000 11:26 PM               

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I don't think we can learn to communicate and interact and do all of the things that are so fundamental to humanity if we are totally isolated.

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..., or perhaps even sometime AFTER birth when the infant has experienced enough to begin having enough experience to begin the process of interpreting the world.

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posted 11-28-2000 12:53 PM               

As for the imaginary Nell scenario, I remembered something of the case upon which it was based. A young girl who was raised with a minimum of human contact and no language feedback (by a, well duh, abusive parent) who was nicknamed "Wild Child." The pysch community had her tested forever, and I did see a PBS program (last year?) called of the Wild Child" which was very interesting. Check out the link to the PBS transcript, and maybe that can spark some more conversation.
[edited because I found the online transcript to the PBS show in question.]

posted 11-28-2000 09:44 PM               

It looks like the question we're sort of hovering around is one of self-awareness. Dave, before I even got to your comments on the soul being attached after an infant has experienced some of the world, I was thinking that self-awareness makes us human. But babies aren't really self-aware (are they?), so I don't know where the hell to take that.

So I think it has to be more than self-awareness. Two friends of mine had a baby a little over a year ago, named Eoin (pronounced "Owen"). About eight months after Eoin was born, they brought home a puppy named Ada (yeah, I think they're crazy too).

For a while there, Ada and Eoin seemed about equally self-aware, though Eoin was a lot cuter and less interested in food. So what does that mean? My dog is 12 years old, and you'd be hard pressed to spend time with him and say he's not self-aware on some level. Does this mean Poopy (my dog) is more human than Eoin? I don't think so.

I think being human has a lot more to do with creativity. Humans create art, which is something no other form of life can do. (My definition of art is pretty broad; essentially, anything that exists as a result of human creativity is art. Scott McCloud's definition is pretty good too: Art is anything that has nothing to do with survival or reproduction. Though sometimes the reproduction part can be pretty artistic. )

But I guess there you run into the same question: When was the last time a three-month-old created art? Eeg. My head hurts. I think I'm gonna go lay down.

posted 11-29-2000 06:36 PM               

zygote: the first week after sucessful fertilization (not implantation which typically occurs at days 6-7), no specific specialization of cells (i.e. hair cells, liver cells) has yet occurred. Some additional stages occur here having to do with the number of cells present (blastocyst, embroblast, and trophoblast).

embryo: second to seventh week--by the *end* of this period the cardiovascular system is functioning and all major internal and external structures have begun to form

fetus: weeks 8 to delivery (normal delivery is at 40 weeks)

Other interesting intrauterine information I learned:

visual responses: at 29 weeks, you can play the "flashlight game" with the fetus. A fetus at this stage can see (and open their eyes) and turn towards light, so by placing a flashlight on different parts of the mother's abdomen, you can entice the baby to move in the womb.

posted 11-30-2000 12:37 AM               

But just because we don't remember our infancies or prenatal states does not mean that the zygote does not have some kind of awareness...this of course assumes some kind of dualistic notion of soul and body.

But even lets assume that the human is purely physical...then how can the embryo not be human? Just because it lacks some brain cells? Is humanity really just brain activity? If it were, then (as some of our previous speakers have begun to surmise), one might then quantify the amount of humanity in an individual.
Unless there is simply a thresh-hold of brainwork needed to be human.
I have no problem with simply identifying a human as any biological offspring of a human...simply because I don't see how it could be anything else. Maybe it's a lack of imagination on my part...but I think I have a pretty big imagination.
I mean, a machine could be built that might think in human-like ways, but I don't think that makes it part of the human race.

In the end, I think being human is an experience...dare I say, an experience of the subject and can therefore only be defined by the human being itself. I am human.

The distinction between human and animal might through a unevolved monkey wrench into the works for my argument, and the only defense I can make is that, with the exception of Koko the gorilla, we don't have a whole lot of animals that will attempt self-expression if given enough time.

You might notice an interesting pattern throughout history of what happens when people attempt to label the inhuman:
Slavery, genocide, war, and Jerry Springer.

posted 11-30-2000 01:25 AM               

I like the consistency of your "if it's living tissue with human DNA, it's human" definition -- it's simple and straightforward. But it causes problems at the end-of-the-life-cycle part of the discussion. Harvesting the organs of a brain dead person is murder by your definition. I think it's justifiable because the soul or whatever physical processes that are necessary to sentience and humanity are gone, but to be consistent, I have to say that life does not begin until those processes begin.

The more I consider the importance of the brain in all this, the more I think that the pre-brain activity fetus is a proto-human like the sperm and egg -- the living tissue that generates the full gestalt of organs and procsses that makes human life possible.

posted 11-30-2000 09:21 PM               

No, I think you can make distinctions between a brain dead person and a pre-brain person.
The developing embryo is carrying out a natural process of its own design...maybe not conscious willpower, but it is doing what it does when nothing "artificial" interferes.
The body of the brain dead (not comatose) person only functions because of the volition of some external force.
And, I think we might have to define sentience and self-awareness just for the kids.

posted 12-01-2000 12:09 AM               

I think you're treading on dangerous ground with your "reliance on outside force" argument, Ray. That zygote or embryo doesn't do a darned thing if it doesn't implant itself in the uterus and start drawing sustenance from the mother. What makes one form of life support different from another? Also, and sl, correct me if I'm wrong -- aren't there standards of brain death where the brain stem, say, is still able to power the heart and lungs but all higher function is lost?

Besides, I'm not talking about viability here, or natural processes. I'm talking about what is the threshold an organism must cross to be a person with all the associated rights, privileges and responsibilities. I don't find the "genetically homo sapiens" argument compelling -- cancer cells are genetically homo sapiens fulfilling the natural intent of its coding. We have no compunction about destroying masses of those cells. There's something persons have that those masses of cells don't -- I want to know what it is.

posted 12-01-2000 07:14 AM               

I think its rather fallacious to compare a fetus to cancer cells. Cancer cells are clearly an aberration that serve no real function, have no potential to serve a function, and (when malignant) can only injure the host body. A fetus's purpose is to eventually leave the mother without (usually) while posing minimal threat to the mother's life. With pregnancy there is a chance of mortality, cancer is a fatal disease.

And I think it is also not quite accurate to depict the mother's womb as a life support system. An embryo needs nutrition...the womb provides nutrition. The mother's body does not control the functions of the embryo the way a life support system controls the function of a human body.

I would also like to propose another line of thinking...Why do we want to euthanize those who show no outward signs of humanity and reject that which is or has the potential for humanity? Again, it seems to me that these things come out of survivalistic instincts to spare ourselves and our resources from unwanted or unanticipated expenditures...but isn't want makes us human the sometimes illogical sacrifice of ourselves and our energy for that which does not seem to call for it? Isn't charity what separates us from the beasts?
If we are willing to rationalize the destruction of human life because it does not meet some definition of personhood, haven't we lost some of our humanity?

posted 12-01-2000 08:44 AM               

In the case of a spiritual being, I would say that the spirit has left the body. That's my whole point, really. I think we're more than a body, and that at some point that which makes us what we are can be separated from our body. I think there's also a point when what makes us who we are isn't attached, for want of a better term, to our body, and I think it behooves us to try and pin that down a bit.

I also don't think my cancer cell example is fallacious in the conext I used it. You proposed that if something is genetically homo sapiens, it's human. I was offering a counterexample. You've now revised your definition to an organism that is genetically homo sapiens that has a certain purpose. I confess I don't understand the justification for that particular definition. I think it's clear that if all goes according to plan, an embryo grows into a viable human being and a person. But that does not make it clear to me that at all points said organism is human.

I also think that your choice of words is a bit inappropriate. You ask why people want to "euthanize a human life" when the very question up for discussion is what a human life is. If an embryo is not a human life, then there's no euthanizing of it going on at all. Further, this is an important issue that has implications beyond the abortion debate; I want to have some answer to this so that I know how to address issues like ending life support or what to do if, God forbid, I ever get some brain-degenerating disease. It's not merely a matter of figuring out what we can off for our own convenience and maintain a clear conscience.

I also think my life support analogy is at least somewhat valid; the mother must provide oxygen and nutrition in a way that I believe is sufficiently similar to respirators and feeding tubes. But I can understand why you might feel differently.

posted 12-01-2000 11:32 AM               

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And I think it is also not quite accurate to depict the mother's womb as a life support system. An embryo needs nutrition...the womb provides nutrition. The mother's body does not control the functions of the embryo the way a life support system controls the function of a human body.

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If we are willing to rationalize the destruction of human life because it does not meet some definition of personhood, haven't we lost some of our humanity?

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aren't there standards of brain death where the brain stem, say, is still able to power the heart and lungs but all higher function is lost?

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if life begins at conception, how many lives are being snuffed out by nature?

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posted 12-01-2000 11:50 PM               

I'm not sure what it means to say the soul "leaves" the body. Who says the soul is "in" the body? If the soul is spiritual, then why does it have to have any physical location? I'd rather see the body as some kind of physical manifestation or avatar of some other worldly being. I don't profess to know how the body and soul communicate and I don't know what the soul experiences when the body is not functioning normally. But it seems to me that souls probably don't have memories or personalities or most of the attributes that we identify with the person since the soul itself does not have the molecular structures which generate these things.

The reason I brought up charity was not so much to discuss social reform for the public policy thread, as to question what it means for US to be human who claim to be human. I think part of that definition includes charity. As you observe with issues of mercy, what charity means becomes the next definition to debate.

As we say all this, I would like to add that as I Catholic, I hold to the "extraordinary means" loophole which states that if the person can only live by hooking them up to machines or buy providing them with medicine and not simply nutrition, then it is okay for that person to refuse that treatment.

Cancer's cells might come from a human, but I don't think they have humanity since, when studied, they have traits that make them aberrant and inherently destructive to the body (if malignant). You don't observe that in the cells at the beginning of life.

And even if I concede the mother's body does function in ways similar to life support, I don't think you can consider it the same as extraordinary means. Unplugging the respirator is not the same as mutilating the body of the person hooked up to it. I don't think anyone would approve of ripping apart the body of the brain dead until it can no longer function. And "unplugging" the respirator in this case means stopping a woman's body from its natural processes.

Nature snuffs out life, so it must be a natural process...
Nature cannot make a distinction between people and not people. People die all the time in natural disasters, that doesn't mean someone who starts a forest fire shouldn't be responsibility for casualties just because forest fires happen anyway.
Most women I know who experience "natural" abortions don't simply chalk it up to nature and go about their business.

posted 12-02-2000 09:56 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:

The fact of the matter is we don't know if the "brain dead" experience anything.

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The only way I see this sentence being true is in the sense that we don't know anything because we can possibly envision it turning out to be false.

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If you believe in a soul and that a soul makes a person, then the human must be capable of self-awareness without a body. And what makes us who we are clearly is not the soul, but the body.

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These two sentences appear to be contradictory.

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Personality and behavior all seem a result of the brain because they can be altered by chemical stimuli or physical damage. "Who" we are is entirely dependent on the body.

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I would disagree with this; if this is true, human activity is locked into the same causal determination as physical processes, and there is not only no free will, but we may as well junk talk of thoughts, beliefs, etc. The use of mind-altering and psychotropic substances, as well as the implications of brain damage, seem to go against me here, but I see no way of reconciling the notion that the self is the body with free agency. Therefore I must believe that there is some other important factor in play; at the moment, I am trying to work out a position that holds that the physical world shifts itself to refelct the mental/spritual activity of sentient minds, but I realize this is an out-there thought that needs more backing.

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Besides, the "self" that you are at any given moment is constantly changing.

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Depends on how you define self . . . there is a continuity to the changes in physical and psychological conditions.

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I agree that the thought of a brain-degenerating disease is frightening...I certainly don't want to have one...but even if that changes who you are, it doesn't change WHAT you are.

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I would contend that that depends on what the disease does.

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I'm not sure what it means to say the soul "leaves" the body. Who says the soul is "in" the body? If the soul is spiritual, then why does it have to have any physical location?

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I'm using the word metaphorically, Ray. Give me a little credit here. I'm not the first person ever to do it. Whether it's spatial or not, if the soul and body are distinct substances, there is a connection between the two that is sundered at some point. If they're not distinct substances, then either the soul is not immortal or there's a point where its relationship to the body changes.

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I'd rather see the body as some kind of physical manifestation or avatar of some other worldly being. I don't profess to know how the body and soul communicate and I don't know what the soul experiences when the body is not functioning normally.

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Interesting definition -- what about it do you feel requires that the body automatically assumes this role at conception and ceases to fulfill it at death?

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But it seems to me that souls probably don't have memories or personalities or most of the attributes that we identify with the person since the soul itself does not have the molecular structures which generate these things.

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Since a zygote or two month embryo doesn't have them either, wouldn't that mean they're not persons? And how do you reconcile this notion with the Catholic/Christian idea that the soul survives and enters heaven or hell?

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The reason I brought up charity was not so much to discuss social reform for the public policy thread, as to question what it means for US to be human who claim to be human. I think part of that definition includes charity. As you observe with issues of mercy, what charity means becomes the next definition to debate.

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Does this mean that persons lacking in charity give up claim to their rights as persons?

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As we say all this, I would like to add that as I Catholic, I hold to the "extraordinary means" loophole which states that if the person can only live by hooking them up to machines or buy providing them with medicine and not simply nutrition, then it is okay for that person to refuse that treatment.

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This assumes that the person is condition to give informed consent -- I think discussion of this issue is necessary for those occasions where this is not possible.

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Cancer's cells might come from a human, but I don't think they have humanity since, when studied, they have traits that make them aberrant and inherently destructive to the body (if malignant). You don't observe that in the cells at the beginning of life.

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So now the definition of personhood is "genetically homo sapiens, not aberrant, and not destructive to any body to which they are attached." You just defined one of those conjoined twins as not human, unless there's an element of your definition I'm missing.

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And even if I concede the mother's body does function in ways similar to life support, I don't think you can consider it the same as extraordinary means. Unplugging the respirator is not the same as mutilating the body of the person hooked up to it. I don't think anyone would approve of ripping apart the body of the brain dead until it can no longer function.

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It's called "harvesting organs for transplant," and it is said to be justified because the person is already dead. Keep in mind, I'm not saying that the fact that a five month old fetus with brain activity depends on its mother for support justifies killing it. You're the one who claimed that the different between the brain dead and the fetus was that the brain dead depended on outside support, and all I'm trying to point out is that that distinction doesn't hold up, and if we want to say there's a difference between the two -- and I agree there is a difference between the brain dead and a fetus with brain activity -- we need to articulate what that difference is.

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And "unplugging" the respirator in this case means stopping a woman's body from its natural processes.

Nature snuffs out life, so it must be a natural process...

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Seeing these two sentences together makes me wonder why we should give precedence to natural processes if our reason and our capabilities allow us to do otherwise.

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Nature cannot make a distinction between people and not people. People die all the time in natural disasters, that doesn't mean someone who starts a forest fire shouldn't be responsibility for casualties just because forest fires happen anyway.
Most women I know who experience "natural" abortions don't simply chalk it up to nature and go about their business.

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You're absolutely right, and I'm not saying that the fact that a lot of embryos never implant automatically proves they're not human. I just think that if one believes that the universe was designed intelligently, it seems very poor design to have so many people blink in and out of existence. If one doesn't believe the universe was designed, you could probably go either way with it, but for me, I have a hard time imagining what kind of "life" such an embryo leads.

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Finally, and maybe this belongs in the medical ethics thread, I would like to say that even though I believe abortion and euthanasia to be inherently wrong, this does not make them inherently sinful when done in clear conscience.
Just figured I'd get that out there before someone accuses Catholic-boy of damning everyone to the infernal chasms.

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I appreciate that . . . and for me, the purpose of this whole discussion is to make sure that a conscience is as informed as possible in making its choices. In the case of abortion, it's more an intellectual argument, but you never know when it might come in handy to have given this some thought in a relatively unemotional setting.

(Edited to fix a few errors that probably bothered no one but me.)

posted 12-02-2000 02:45 PM               

I don't think we are a person because of personality. Perhaps I can be attacked by my comrades in language through some etymological malpractice, but I see no reason to cling to notions that our intelligence, wit, or any other trait is inherent to the soul. This does not deny free will...sometimes we do things that even surprise ourselves, so to speak. The fact that I have free will means I can rise above my personality.
Perhaps this is difficult to discern because one might say that a humane person merely has a humane personality. I guess we'll have to further explore the origins of our actions.

I also think language betrays us here. Just thinking of the soul as a "distinct substance," even in metaphorical terms, thinks of it as a thing...but the soul is nothing. That's one of the reasons we have trouble conceptualizing it.

And I don't see why the soul needs to have a memory or personality to maintain Christian views of the afterlife. We can exist without knowing what we once were...kind of like the transition from embryo to child. Just because we don't remember things, doesn't mean we weren't present.

Regarding cancer cells, by "aberrant" I meant that we can look at a cancer cell and say: that is a malformed human cell. I don't think you can do the same thing with a twin. I could be wrong, but the twin's DNA probably looks like human DNA.
For what that is worth.

posted 12-22-2000 02:28 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:

Regarding cancer cells, by "aberrant" I meant that we can look at a cancer cell and say: that is a malformed human cell. I don't think you can do the same thing with a twin. I could be wrong, but the twin's DNA probably looks like human DNA.
For what that is worth.

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posted 01-19-2001 01:26 PM               

Well, I still have remembered what the rest of what I wanted to say was, so I'll just go ahead and respond to the responses.

As for the discussion of DNA, it's a toughie, espeically with the whole 99% shared genes with primates. And, of course, a single human cell sustained on its own apar from the rest of the body isn't going to demand any special rights as a citizen...though I think a zygote isn't quite the same thing given that it is the ONLY cell of that particular body.
I think the DNA approach allows me, from my particular position, to give some leeway to the thomistic approach following Aristotle's notion that for something to be something it must have the outward traits of its somethingness (I'm speaking out of my field of course, feel free to correct me)...DNA, however, allows us to visible see those outward traits even before they are manifest to the naked eye.

posted 01-19-2001 07:19 PM               

Just a conjecture for discussion.

posted 01-19-2001 11:54 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:

Perhaps the preoccupation with the functions of the brain results from the notion of the spirit-body dualism. Since we now locate the brain with mental faculties...those faculties which are usually used to distinguish us from animals...

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Not in my case, although I understand how this can happen. I on the other hand believe in a sort of monism that says our current conception of "matter" as merely an unthinking, inert, stuff that behaves in a wholly predictable and formulaic fashion is far too simplistic, as I sort of mentioned over on the Free Will thread. When we get readings on the brain or any part of the body, we're getting readings on the single stuff that makes us what we are. It's a matter of the proper interpretation of those readings that gets tricky.

A deterministically materialist approach renders the question moot, of course, as we will take whatever position and perform whatever actions we are determined to do. A non-deterministic materialism or monism says that we are free, but can understand the stuff that makes up our reality, ourselves included, and then choose what to do with that information.

posted 01-20-2001 08:42 PM               

So maybe I should start reading books by people who would support MY view on humanity.

Anyway...the biggest issue for me is still the whole problem of interface between soul and body...How does not-matter flick our little material switches? Or is the soul some kind of non-physical force like gravity.
I dunno.

posted 01-21-2001 12:03 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:
[B]
I mentioned the book Eternal Golden Braid over in the free will thread, but I think an element of the free will question has some obvious connections here.
While Hostadter is in no way making an allowance for any kind of dualistic reality with souls or anything, he does talk about the possibility of "artificial" intelligence arising out of epiphenomenon...the ol' Platonic the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, to suggest that even a mechanistic approach to minds might need to take into account that the difference between intellectual beings and animals is a matter quantity of mental activity.
To completely oversimplify his arguments, his objective is to conjecture that we might not need one super complex computer to recreate the human mind...but rather a network of very simple ones.

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One thing I think you're doing is equating materialism with determinism. (You may also therefore be equating free will with dualism, I'm not sure.) The example you cite is still a mechanistic or deterministic materialism -- I think; you confuse me when you use epiphenomenalism, because to be epiphenomenal is by definition to have no impact, if I recall correctly; but I digress -- and what I think is that you can have free will and you can have monism as long as you assume that matter is not determined. You can't ever say "given set of causal conditions A, result [/i]B[/i] must occur," because the fundamental, primordial whatever-the-heck-it-is that makes us thinking beings might say, "Ya know what? I feel like result [/i]C[/i] today instead."

Now, just because that whatever-the-heck-it-is is unpredictable doesn't mean that it's completely unknowable, so it's still perfectly consistent that brain readings are a window onto this activity. They're just not a window that ever admits of the possibility of perfect prediction, because in my mind, part of what makes us human is our ability to choose which possibilities we make real.

posted 01-21-2001 12:47 AM               

I was using Hofstadter's definition of epiphenomenon...unless I'm just remembering the wrong word...it's been over a year since I read him.

And I suppose I am blurring determinism and materialism a little too hastily. I suppose it comes from my limited computer science background that there is no such thing as a random number...but I didn't want to use the whole notion of chaotic matter as a crutch.

And, of course, I'm not exactly why I keep trying to distinguish between a spiritual reality and a physical reality...reality should just be reality, no?

But I think we need to be careful talking about what our unconscious or nonconscious body "wants" since this seems to imply it has a character or that it has any concept of larger pictures, rather than simply responding to in a complex chain of physical reactions.

posted 01-21-2001 01:28 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:

But I think we need to be careful talking about what our unconscious or nonconscious body "wants" since this seems to imply it has a character or that it has any concept of larger pictures, rather than simply responding to in a complex chain of physical reactions.

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posted 01-22-2001 07:53 AM               

Here's a creepy thought...what if souls exist without what we know as consciousness...thus necessitating theological doctrines regarding the resurrection (doesn't everyone love how I keep pulling theology onto the philosophy board) .

I, of course, am just making all this up...but it does open options.

Perhaps what we need to do is backtrack and start creating patterns around what is NOT human. Not to simply define a thing negatively, but it might help.

posted 01-22-2001 12:50 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Ray Bossert:

Okay, let's, for the argument, go with the body/"mind" being indivisible. What does that do to your views of the afterlife?

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Personally, I believe that the whatever-it-is that we are made up of reorganizes itself in such a way to allow consciousness to survive after death. We probably exist in a different form of consciousness, but I do think we continue to exist.

quote:

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Here's a creepy thought...what if souls exist without what we know as consciousness...thus necessitating theological doctrines regarding the resurrection

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posted 01-23-2001 07:59 PM               

The kooky idea I was proposing was that the soul might exist subconsiously. That is, the soul itself might not be the perceiver of our experiences. I'm just making this up as I go along mind you. But what if we conceive of the soul as the "information" of a disk, meaningless and rather useless without a body to process it, but still capturing the essence of being? Consciousness being the sensible output , like the visuals on the monitor.

I'm pretty much just thinking in type write now, so I'm re-evaluating the disk metaphor...it might work in the sense that I'm trying to describe the soul as existing apart from that which we call consciousness.

But I think the soul can still do things, since I think it is either attracted to or repulsed by God in the afterlife, and that's where the whole Heaven/Hell thing comes in.

What I'm suggesting is the soul as some kind of immaterial organ. We can injure certain organs without necessarily even being aware of it, but it is still detrimental to our well being. Perhaps consciousness does not reoccur until resurrection, when a newer, faster, more jazzy looking body is released. New, from Divine Technologies, Humanity 7.0...
And our soul's are put into that after the process of purification.

posted 01-25-2001 11:13 PM               

Perhaps, if no one wants to respond to my previous conjecture...we could discuss issues of "dehumanization."

posted 01-25-2001 11:31 PM               

And there are parts of your "upgrade" analogy I like, but when I think of the soul, I'm thinking of the defining thing that makes me what I am -- and included in that has to be my ability for awareness and my ability to use that awareness in a free way to choose between possibilities. I think if you don't define the core of humanity in this way, you begin to take away from the notion that human life is a different kind of life than animal life and thus deserving of special treatment.

As for whether someone could ever be so vile or whatever as to "give up" their humanity -- I would say 'no,' only because I view someone's personhood as a fundamental requirement for their having responsibility for their actions, and if someone is no longer a person then their responsibility is stripped away. I don't want to do that based solely on behavior.

posted 01-27-2001 11:04 PM               

So your primary difference alludes back to the free will thread...giving responsibility for action. We hold humans accountable for a choice, whereas we don't do the same with animals because we do not believe them capable of choice or reason.

posted 02-17-2001 12:29 AM               

Came across the following doing homework and thought it spoke to this thread:

Excerpted from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:

posted 09-20-2001 06:56 PM               

Edited to say congratulations to Dave

posted 09-21-2001 02:01 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Kali:

Everyone here is discussing humanity as if it's an either-or situation, like either you're human or you're not. I see it more as a gradual process, in which there are different degrees of humanity:

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I can see the merit in this, but don't you still have to have a notion of what it is that you're tracking gradations of? In the series you describe, you're combining physical and emotional qualities; how do you lay that all out in a continuum? And doesn't the principle by which you lay out the continuum actually become your working definition or standard?

The other thing is, if we're going to have such a broad range, wouldn't it be a requirement for us to stop using phrases like 'human rights,' or at least view those rights differently? Are we going to say that people who hate have fewer or weaker 'basic' rights because they're 'less human'? And who gets to make that call?

quote:

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Edited to say congratulations to Dave

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Don't forget Pattie -- she's doing most of the work right now.

posted 03-27-2003 06:24 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Justin:
...95% of America believes in a supernatural being or something supernatural.

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Every poll I've read in the last couple of years puts the 'Secular' (i.e. non-believing) population of America at about 15% of the total. That leaves 85% to believe in something supernatural.

quote:

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If most religious backgrounds belive that a higer power created humans to be equal in every respect ...

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