There a difference between allowing to die and killing. The doctors can work out how they want to do this in a human way very easily — Gregory

Is thawing out embryos allowing them to die or is it killing?

Your answer is still not clear, so I'll try again. Do you think we should keep millions of embryos frozen for all eternity? Please choose one of the two options below.

A) Yes - we must keep millions of embryos frozen for all eternity - and laws must be passed to insure this.
B) No - It may be necessary at some point to unfreeze them and thus (using your terminology) murder them. E.g., the clinic goes bankrupt and no one is willing to pay to keep them frozen. Note that I'm not implying that this a good outcome.

Actually, there is a third option - namely (a la the Catholic Church) that in vitro fertilization should be illegal - but since you have had ample opportunity to state that and have not, I assume you are OK with IVF.

Again, I am not criticizing your position. But there are far reaching policy decisions to be made if a country is to incorporate zygote personhood into its' legal system. This has to be thought though..

Your response was not clear so just confirming. If I'm following you, you think we should keep millions of embryos frozen for all eternity. Am I understanding you correctly?

As predicted, you cannot answer this one simple question. Our discussion has now looped around three times with me asking a question and you giving me non-answers and/or attempting to switch the dialogue.

I don't have the bandwidth to engage you further, my real life activities are much higher priority. I give you the last word . . .

I'll try a different tactic. Once again your point #8:

8 With respect to the natural/physical sciences, like science and religion, ideally or theoretically, should philosophy and [physical] science work together to help better understand consciousness? — 3017amen

The plain language reading of this is that you are claiming that religion is a natural science. If my reading of this is incorrect and, as @180 Proof hypothesized, you are simply making some sort of analogy? Then please explain what you actually mean.

BUT - if my plain language reading is accurate- that religion is a type or form or subset of natural science, then I disagree. Religion - all religions - are based on supernatural claims which are outside the realm/discourse of what science (let alone natural science) deals with. Science does not deal with supernatural claims.

Again, I'm only talking about your point #8. If you feel the urge to bring in anything from points #1 thru #7, please resist that urge and proceed directly to point #8.

Also, this is not a criticism of religion or people being religious. It is merely to make clear that religion is not a natural science. Please limit your response to this one narrow topic only.

I tried but I find that interpretation a real stretch. But if indeed that's what the OP is trying to say, then they could/should simply say it. E.g.,

I was comparing the prospect of "philosophy and science" collaborating on consciousness to (i.e. "like") that of the late Scholastic, early Enlightenment collaboration-rivalry of "religion and science" (i.e. natural theology and natural philosophy) on problems of cosmology. — 180 Proof

Or something equivalent.

Instead we get this non-answer

Natural science>life science>cognitive science>phenomenology>religion — 3017amen

I am not criticizing your stance. I am simply attempting to follow through on the implications of your position.

Are you opposed to in vitro fertilization (that would be a legitimat6e position to take)? If not, then are you OK with millions of partially developed human beings existing in a sort of unconscious limbo for all eternity? If not, what should happen?

Natural science>life science>cognitive science>phenomenology>religion — 3017amen

I have no idea what that means. Would you please clarify that? Thank you.

OK - I just wanted to be clear. You believe in zygote personhood (i.e., the zygote is a legally a person and any attempts to prevent the zygote from being implanted in the woman's womb is murder.).

So now I'm curious - what is your position regarding in vitro fertilization (IVF)? More specifically, what should be done with the left over human beings who are sitting around cryogenically frozen? Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but by at least one estimate there are 1.4 million in the US alone.

Is it murder to destroy a cryogenically frozen embryo? If yes, then what should be done with them?

With respect to the natural/physical sciences, like science and religion, ideally or theoretically, should philosophy and [physical] science work together to help better understand consciousness? — 3017amen

Can you kindly explain in what sense religion is a "natural/physical science"? Thank you.

If it was obvious we would not be having this discussion.

Are you OK with a woman taking a "morning after" pill to prevent the blastocyst from implanting in her womb?

If you want us to respect all human life then you need to be specific. When does human life begin? Is a zygote a person? A blastocyst? An embryo?

Here's a pertinent article: How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists

Total state control over society, that's what people object to. — Apollodorus

Much of this discussion has been over the definition of the word socialism. Not trying to be flippant here. Is partial state control OK? If so, how much? What are the criteria for determining when there is too much state control?

In my wildest dreams I never imagined that I would agree with Bartricks on anything, but I think he's got a valid point here:

What the hell are you asking? — Bartricks

I would amend his question to also ask "To whom the hell are you asking this question?"

Funny you should bring this up. This was on my Facebook feed just a few days ago:

https://www.facebook.com/bbccomedy/posts/10157981561436778

Quote from a 1960s USA TV show. You'll have to find the rest yourself . . . :nerd:

So I'm just saying, "Ward, don't you think you're being a little hard on the Beaver?" — TonesInDeepFreeze

You realize that you have just outed yourself as being of a certain age . . . :razz:

The Australia path is a ticking time bomb in my opinion, it could go off at anytime in the future. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Not if the Australians have any say in the matter: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/australia-begins-mass-covid-19-vaccination-programme-idUSKBN2AL0Q1

When I compare power-hungry individuals occupying a corporation vs a government, I prefer the mercantilist to the dictator. — NOS4A2

I'm assuming that you live in a democracy - i.e., not Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc. If I'm mistaken in that assumption, then I apologize because you have a whole different set of problems.

At least I can refuse to work with or purchase the services of the mercantilist, — NOS4A2

Not when the mercantilist has monopoly control of an essential item - food, water, clothing, housing. And remember that this will happen in your hypothetical unregulated economy.

That we have to beg our governments to address these concerns instead of taking on the task ourselves is just another hurdle to seeing it through. — NOS4A2

In a democracy, however flawed it may be, you are the government. In a democracy you and your fellow citizens have the final say on what the government does. If you do not like the decisions your fellow citizens have made, if you do not like the policies your government is pursuing, you can pick up and move to another state/province/country where things are run more to your liking.

I highly doubt that you will find any such place, but I could be wrong.

Or you can always buy a boat and live out int the ocean. Or perhaps this might be a good solution for you.

Surely a solution to the problem exists outside of government intervention. — NOS4A2

In your hypothetical regulation free society you're screwed.

Perhaps once we relocate we can innovate a cleaner and more cost-effective method and put our former neighbor out of business, without having to give more power and money to some intervening bureaucracy. — NOS4A2

We are all responsible for the reasonably predictable consequences of our actions. History has shown us over and over that - in the absence of laws regulating economic activity - economic power becomes
hyper concentrated in the hands of a few power hungry individuals - and power hungry people do not willingly give up their power. This is why most democracies have anti-monopoly laws.

In your hypothetical regulation free society, your attempts to put the mega-corporation polluting your town out of business will fail. Mega-corporation will deny you the access to the raw materials needed to create your cleaner & cost effective solution. Mega-corporation will make it impossible for you to get access to the marketplace to sell your solution. We know this as well as we know anything.

Governments are notoriously awful at managing the environment. — NOS4A2

And what's the alternative? Rely on the good will of people? You know the answer to that.

When we believe the government will take care of these issues, we thereby hand over our responsibility, believing they will take care of it. — NOS4A2

That's why we have democracies. If your government is doing a lousy job of managing the environment, then get together with your fellow citizens and elect a different government. Is this easy? Of course not. Is this a perfect solution? Of course not - duh. . .

The reasonably predictable outcome of your hypothetical regulation free society is that you would have less freedom than you do now.

- - - - - -

To a certain extent I understand & empathize with your position. No one wants to be forced how to live their life, we all want to maximize our freedom and options. But on this small planet with 7.5 or so billion people, every action we take - no matter how small - affects everyone else.

If I turn up the thermostat in my house from 68 to 70 because we have company, I am affecting your life in a small but measurable way.

If I am feeling tired and drive to the store to get milk instead of walking - even in my nice environmentally & politically correct Prius - I am affecting your life in some small but measurable way.

Every time I flush the toilet, I am affecting your life in a small but measurable way.

Multiply this by 7.5 billion.

Absent that I would have to relocate. — NOS4A2

And when a big polluting industry moves into town and starts polluting the entire town, then everyone would have to relocate to another town. And when multiple industries move into your state/province, then you can re-locate to another state/province.

Eventually you will run out of places to relocate. OK, maybe outer space, but even there pollution is a problem.

And if you need laws to convince you to avoid spewing toxic fumes into your neighbor’s yard then maybe the society isn’t the problem. — NOS4A2

In this imperfect world that we live in laws are required.

So if I'm understanding you, if I were to move next door to you and built a lead smelting plant and spew toxic fumes into your yard, then in your ideal society there would be no legal mechanism for you to stop me from doing this.

Am I getting this correctly?

The very first Existential Comics has a good take on this: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

There is no such thing as natural laws in science. — MondoR

I agree. However, for better or worse the term Scientific Law is in general use. The overview in the Wikipedia article does a pretty good job of clarifying the situation, but it is easy to mix up "natural law" and "scientific law".

Why does God have the Israelites march around the walls of Jericho once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh day before the walls fall? — BBQueue

Isn't it obvious? On the seventh day, six times would not have been enough and eight times would have been too many.

If you're still confused, perhaps this will clarify things.

Not sure about those first six days tho. Seems a bit excessive to me. . . .

This is all interesting, but not what I asked. Perhaps I was not clear.

I'm questioning why the word moral needs to be in here. Is there such a concept as immoral responsibility? I doubt it.

But perhaps there are other categories of responsibility that are conceptually distinct from "moral responsibility"? If not, then the word "moral" seems redundant.

A question for all parties.
Moral Responsibility

So he's talking about being responsible in a 'retributivist' sense. — Bartricks

Every voluntary action that a person takes (so excluding breathing, sleeping, etc) has some measurable impact on the physical world - however minimal. Are there other categories of responsibility that are non-retributive in nature?

If I follow his "reasoning" he is not initially attributing powers - his starting point is to simply define the words. Then he is trying to somehow bootstrap his definitions into existence.

God can make true propositions be false at the same time. But he's told us that true propositions are not false at the same time. Does the fact he's told us that true propositions are not false at the same time give us reason to believe that true propositions are not false at the same time? Yes. — Bartricks

No.

First of all we don't know that your omniscient being (AKA God) planted these imperatives of Reason in our minds, that's one of many things you are trying to prove.

But even acting under that assumption - even if we assume that He planted these imperatives of Reason in our minds - there is no way to know that what He planted in our minds is correct. He could have planted false/bogus imperatives of Reason in our minds. Our limited human minds (which He created) would have no way of knowing that.

Or perhaps our limited mortal human minds (which He created) are incapable of processing the actual imperatives of Reason, and so your omniscient God has placed a greatly reduced and simplified version of the full set of imperatives in our minds - and this reduced/simplified set of imperatives only function properly under certain limited situations - e.g., when dealing with the practicalities of our physical existence.

Can you use your imperatives of Reason to rule out these possibilities? No, because your omniscient being is not bound by your imperatives - and so you cannot use the imperatives to prove anything about such a being since there is no certainty that the imperatives of Reason are correct and/or will lead to correct conclusions.

End of discussion.

- - - - - -

BTW - at the risk of asking too many questions at once, why do you keep capitalizing the word "Reason" and not the word "imperatives"? Is there some person, place, or thing called Reason?

I'm flattered, thanks. I always try to criticize the idea not the person.

I'm actually a bit embarrassed at some of my earlier comments in this thread. Bartricks insulted me with the Dunning Kruger reference.

I should have ignored it, but instead I responded in kind. That was very out of character and wrong of me.

Why are you cutting and pasting an earlier post?

There are enough holes in this line of reasoning to fill The Albert Hall. I did a whole back & forth with Bartricks to try to get some basic rudimentary explanation from him to fill a few of those holes but with no success. I don't have the time / energy to do yet another back & forth, so I'll give you just a few items that need clarification/answering in the first item.

1. If there are laws of Reason, then there is a mind whose laws they are — Bartricks

What are these "laws of Reason"
Can you list them and/or provide a link where I can examine them. And what's with capitalizing the word "Reason" - what's up with that? Is there some implication/point being made by that capital "R"?

What is meant by the word "are"
As in "There are laws of Reason". The verb "is" (and all its conjugations) has many shades and nuances of meaning/usage. In this sentence it seems like the author is using "are" in an existential sense - i.e., he is asserting some sort of existence. I could be wrong but I doubt that the author of this sentence means that they physically exist - so it seems like he is doing some sort of meta-physical existence - or maybe he means that they only exist our minds? Not sure. But not matter what the explanation is, he has to clarify how you can assign a truth value to this statement.

Why is it "a" mind and not many minds?
And when he says "a mind whose laws they are" - to me this implies ownership - there is "a mind" that "owns" these as of yet undefined "laws of Reason". What does all this mean?

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. As I said earlier I do not have the time / energy to do yet another back & forth, so if you choose to reply I apologize in advance for not replying back.

To you I will appear an idiot. — Bartricks

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I disagree with this. I only know you based on your writing, but based on that it is clear that you are highly informed and intelligent. You just have this blind spot, you're stuck in this "philosophical loop".

Throughout history people much, much smarter than you have attempted to explain/understand what the sentence "God exists" actually means - and they have all failed. The very concept of a deity, god, omniscient being (whatever term you choose to use) is illogical down to its core. You cannot use logical reasoning to prove something illogical.

Based on your writing I'm assuming that you hold some sort of religious belief and that your religious beliefs are important to you - and that's OK. That does not pose a problem for me. But for some reason you cannot accept that this is simply a belief. At the risk of doing an amateur psychoanalysis of someone based on their writings on an internet forum, the sense I get is that there is something inside of you that feels threatened by the notion that there is no logical explanation for your core beliefs.

There is a word for this feeling inside of you - cognitive dissonance. Your desire to believe in God and you desire for there to be logical explanations for this belief are mutually contradictory and this creates an uncomfortable feeling inside of you - a conflict if you will. But instead of rejecting one of these two contradictory notions, you are attempting to do the impossible - use logic (Reason, ratiocination, etc) to prove something illogical.

Again, people much, much smarter than you have attempted to do this and have all failed You're a smart person, but you're no St. Barticks.

Oh, wait a minute, Dunning Kruger - you're an expert and I'm someone who has a smattering of knowledge but lacks the meta-cognitive ability to recognize his limitations. Well, yes. I recognize that I am not an expert in philosophy. I would never argue some fine point about Anselm's take on, umm. . . . . well I hardly know anything about him at all. I would have to google just to remind myself who he was.

BUT - you don't need to be an astronomer to know that the moon orbits around earth and that earth orbits around the sun. You don't need a PhD in History to know that George Washington was the first president of the US. And you don't need to know the first thing about Anselm to recognize that there is no fucking way that you can use logic (Reason, ratiocination, etc) to prove this sentence is true:

There is an omniscient being who has the ability to create a square circle in a galaxy 20 billion light years away if He so chose, but He has not done this.

To use the vernacular, this is just bat shit crazy.

Why an otherwise intelligent person cannot recognize this baffles me.

BUT - maybe I'm wrong. Maybe right now - in this very exchange - I'm demonstrating a classic case of Dunning Kruger and these posts will be quoted 100 years from now. So in your response to me (and I know you will respond) please demonstrate the logic that proves the sentence just above. Give me your definitions/premises and how you arrived at your conclusion.

If you can do this then you are truly a genius of the highest caliber.

@Present awareness@Bartricks

Is it possible to have something more infinite then infinity? How could something that goes on without end, have MORE without end? — Present awareness

Because according to our friend Bartricks, God can do ANYTHING. God can make a square circle. God can make a statement that is both true and false. God is not bound by logic. Anything means anything.

He can do contradictory things. But he hasn't. — Bartricks

So, he 'can' create a being more powerful than himself, but he hasn't. — Bartricks

How do you know that He has not created a square circle in a galaxy 20 billion light years away from you? Perhaps He texted you? Or maybe He has a blog or website where He tells you exactly what He has and hasn't done.

Yes, of course an omnipotent being can create another omnipotent being. He can do anything, so he can do that. — Bartricks

So can the omnipotent being create another being that is MORE omnipotent than him? If yes, then that newly created more omnipotent being can create yet another that is even more omnipotent. Lather, rinse and repeat and infinite number of times.

There will not be more than one omnipotent being. This is because otherwise one could frustrate the other and thus neither would truly be omnipotent. — Bartricks

So an omnipotent being cannot create another being that is equally omnipotent - that would be terribly frustrating for those poor omnipotent beings.

There will not be more than one omnipotent being. This is because otherwise one could frustrate the other and thus neither would truly be omnipotent. — Bartricks

Can an omnipotent being create another being more omnipotent than itself? If no, then such a being is not omnipotent because there is something that it cannot do.

If yes, then you have an infinite number of omnipotent beings, each of which creates a yet more omnipotent being - and thus there is no omnipotent being.

If you want to claim that this reasoning is invalid because you have defined the word omnipotent in such a way that there cannot be anything more omnipotent, then you are carving out an exception to your position that God is capable of doing everything. But if your version of God can illogically break the very definitions of every other word in the English language (create a square circle), then God your should also be able to break your definition of the word omnipotence. You can't have it both ways.

As many people in this thread have tried pointing out to you, the very notion of omnipotence is inherently illogical. But if you are attempting to use logic/reasoning to prove that logic/reasoning can be broken - then you cannot use logic/reasoning to prove anything - since there is no way of knowing that any such "proof" is truly valid. After all - it could be that there is an evil God who has created the rules of logic to deceive you into believing such things.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Look - I have close friends and relatives who are deeply religious - and I have seen first hand that religion helps people cope with life and provides a great source of comfort. And my religious friends/relatives do not feel the need to justify their beliefs - they just live them.

Religion is deeply and profoundly illogical. That's OK. Life is absurd. But for some reason, there are folks who cannot accept this and instead attempt to use all sorts of bizarre reasoning to "prove" the impossible. People much smarter than you & I have attempted to do this and have failed. Even people who believe in God cannot agree on the most basic definitions of words.

You cannot define things into existence (whatever you mean by existence).

Take a leap of faith.

- - - - - - -

BTW - There's no doubt that you are much more knowledgeable about medieval scholasticism & the history of philosophical thought than I. That in itself does not make your points any more valid.

So you have no answer. As I thought.

Then look up Dunning and Kruger and then ask yourself why you might be finding everything I say a bit nonsensical. — Bartricks

Truly ironic

I tried to create a non-sarcastic question but your posts are so bizarrely nonsensical that it slipped through. I apologize for that. That said, my request was sincere. I keep an open mind. Perhaps the phrase "laws of Reason" has some esoteric meaning in your philosophic world view that I'm not getting. I did google "laws of Reason" before I posted but did not find anything useful.

A law of Reason is an imperative or instruction to do or believe something. — Bartricks

I plead ignorance in this discussion. Would you kindly list the "laws of Reason". If this list is too long, perhaps you can supply the top 10?