Matter formed at conception is the soul. I don't subscribe to dualism. Humanity is the form but it is not separate from matter. The soul is all through the body and the body is all through the soul. We speak of them as two and must but I think they are really one. — Gregory

The soul dies with the body then?

We should never recognize the right of one person to take the innocent life of another. — Gregory

So the key word there is "innocent" right?

I don't think we classify lives as "innocent" and "not innocent" in our legal system, so I'm not sure how to proceed. Come to think of it, I don't think I personally classify lives this way, but I guess I can see why you might. Are "not innocent" lives forfeit in general? Or only in specific circumstances?

If you look at the self-defense exception though, we regularly have troublesome cases where someone genuinely believed they were in danger from someone else, or at least convincingly claims they had such a fear, even though the now dead person turns out not to have been carrying a weapon, not to be a known criminal, in short likely not to have been threatening the killer at all. Is that an innocent life that was taken, or a normal life innocent of the offense of threatening the person who killed them? Should we condone such a killing? Or should we require someone to know for certain the other person means them harm? Which option are you absolutely certain is the fair one?

Keep in mind that self-defense is not just an analogy here, but a common exception recognized in abortion laws. An unborn child can threaten a mother's life without having an intention to.

Yes. Matter formed at conception is the soul. I don't subscribe to dualism. Humanity is the form but it is not separate from matter. The soul is all through the body and the body is all through the soul. We speak of them as two and must but I think they are really one. — Gregory

That sounds like the soul is the merger of the soul and the body/matter, but thats a stretch of coherency. What is this thing that merges with the body to form the soul? The soul? That doesnt make sense. Where does the “pre soul” soul come from? The sperm?

On abortion, people are arguing, "first it must have a heart", "no a brain and a heart", "no kidneys too", "no it must be born". All these arguments are random. The form is there at conception and blossoms into different shapes of that form throughout life — Gregory

They aren’t random. I think you mean arbitrary? These are attempts to find a base definition of what a human/person is, and many are based off of reason and biology, not randomly generated.
Also, aren’t you making the same arbitrary (what you called random) move by saying “conception”? Why not go further back and consider human life the sperm, or the egg? The sperm or the egg are “ingredients” for a person in the same way the fertilized egg is an
“ingredient” for the person but for some reason you are making the cut off at fertilized egg. Thats no different in terms of arbitrary/random than making the cut off at being born or developing a heart.

You do use sophistry. The mother has no right over something that is not her body. Child's body, it's rights. — Gregory

You are using a big word in order to sound intelligent. I am not using sophistry. Look it up.

Anyway, the mother has sovereign rights over that which is IN her body, whether some wag wants to claim it is part of her body or not. She can snip that umbilical any old time she wants as far as I'm concerned. The child has no rights unless and until we give it rights. And even then, those rights have been and can be subordinated to the rights of the mother.

The mother has rights over her body, not someone else's — Gregory

She sure as hell does, if that other body goes a wandering around inside of her body. It's like a little uninvited trespasser.

The soul dies with the body then? — praxis

We do not fully understand body, spirit, or death

don't think we classify lives as "innocent" and "not innocent" in our legal system, — Srap Tasmaner

Of course we do

Keep in mind that self-defense is not just an analogy here, but a common exception recognized in abortion laws. An unborn child can threaten a mother's life without having an intention to. — Srap Tasmaner

Someone trying to kill you is not analogous to the situation with a fetus

She sure as hell does, if that other body goes a wandering around inside of her body. It's like a little uninvited trespasser. — James Riley

Coming from somebody who said the fetus is a human but you would personally kill it is asked by the mother..

Coming from somebody who said the fetus is a human but you would personally kill it is asked by the mother.. — Gregory

Correct, and?

I place the mother's right, carte blanche, over that of any that reside within her.

If it wasn't for the abortion issue biologists would be in agreement that human life starts at conception. — Gregory

I agree, life starts at conception. So what? The baby's right to life is subordinate to the arbitrary and capricious whims of the mother.

Support for abortion is completely dependent on emotion and not based on rationality. If you want to be an animal your choices are in your hands

Of course we do — Gregory

No, a life is a life, in my book and the law's. In law, you're either guilty or not guilty of committing a particular act you are forbidden to. There is no concept of a life being innocent that I'm aware of.

Someone trying to kill you is not analogous to the situation with a fetus — Gregory

Nevertheless, a fetus can put a mother's life in danger. Don't think of it as murder, but more like manslaughter, not intentional. Of course in this case, the death of the mother could result not from an action of the fetus, but from it's living at all. Now what?

By the way,

Arbitrary means random — Gregory

It really doesn't. Get a better dictionary.

You don't kill the fetus but if someone attacks you you assume he's not the situation of a fetus. Easy to understand

There is no concept of a life being innocent that I'm aware of. — Srap Tasmaner

Innocent until proven guilty is law

That means "innocent of the offense of which you are accused", not that your life is innocent, whatever that could mean.

Support for abortion is completely dependent on emotion and not based on rationality. If you want to be an animal your choices are in your hands — Gregory

Support for life is completely dependent on emotion and not based on rationality. I am an animal, and so are you. You don't have any choice in the matter.

The right to life means your life is good. Crimes forfeit rights because of bad actions. Your trying to take philosophy out of social science but then what is left?

Freedom means we choose our actions such that crimes merit punishment. Animals may or may not have this. If you choose to act without freedom you have still made a choice

The soul dies with the body then?
— praxis

We do not fully understand body, spirit, or death — Gregory

In that case it’s best to go with what we do know rather than baseless speculation or superstitions, right?

Crimes forfeit rights because of bad actions. — Gregory

But the fetus can be a threat to the mother just by living, not by doing anything. See how peculiar the situation of a pregnant woman and her unborn child is? You'd need a comic-book villain to come up with a scenario like that using only big walking-around people.

If it wasn't for the abortion issue biologists would be in agreement that human life starts at conception. — Gregory

Ideas like this are sort of curious and belies a certain level of naïveté about what classifying something does in a metaphysical way. It is as if you believe that someone’s decision about how to use a word can magically change something from X to ~X and from ~Y to Y.

Last I checked, the cell is the basic unit of life. Sexual reproduction (which is how humans reproduce) involve the contribution of certain genetic material from a male gamete to a female gamete. Virtually all of the male gamete is destroyed in the process and a relatively trivial amount of the male gamete material persists after fusion of the male and female gamete. That is to say, at fertilization, virtually the entire cell is identical to what it was before fertilization save a smidge of new genetic material. There is no “life” that begins in that moment, rather there is a cell with some unique genetic aspects that has the potential to develop into something else. This cell may not be all that different than a cell that has been infected by a virus in so far as the virus changes the genetic makeup of a cell and causes the cell to cease being the “same” as the host’s cells before the infection. You don’t typically find someone arguing that a virally infected cell is a new human merely because there is some change in genetic composition between the cell before and after the infection.

I am mindful of the fact that a fertilized egg may develop into a human and a virally infected cell just explodes, but the question is, where does the material come from for a fertilized egg to develop? So you have 1/10,000 parts contributed from a male sex cell, the remainder from the female sex cell, plus other stuff to make the one cell two (and then four and eight and so on). Where does that stuff come from? It doesn’t come from anywhere - it is simply the incorporation of other parts of the mother, thereby making the non-mother portion of the result two cells like 1/20,000. This process continues - the mother’s one cell with minor genetic variation incorporates more parts of the mother and makes increasing numbers of cells.

Without going through all of embryonic development, suffice it say that you get to a blastocyst which is descended from the initially fertilized cell. This blastocyst has two parts - a trophoblast and the rest. The trophoblast, which is genetically identical to the rest of the blastocyst, goes on to form parts of the placenta and other support structures for the developing embryo. You may recognize the placenta as the thing that people throw in the garbage after a baby is born. What rights does the placenta have given that it meets all of the “life” requirements you established as the basis for being a rights bearer. And if the placenta has no rights, what does it mean to say that a fertilized cell is a rights bearer?

Now let’s say that all of the biologists agree that fertilization results in a cell with a different genetic composition than the cells from which it came and define that new cell as a new organism, how does that change the conversation from a world in which the biologists say that it isn’t a new organism until later embryonic development where individualist structures have developed?

You play a losing game when rights attach to cells with unique genetic properties. That mole on your back might be a rights bearer which you cannot remove without committing murder.

Folks, its clear that on this topic a least, Gregory is all rant and no reason. Why don't we all let him rest and maybe give all of these matters some more thought. Not least because he has failed to respond substantively or reasonably to any point whatsoever, which is itself unreasonable.

:100: :up:

If someone believes in complete materialism than there is no reason one shouldn't enslave or kill anyone on a whim. The point of philosophy is to give these matters more thought, wonder about what is controlling your thoughts, and consider what is best for you and everyone else. Believing in a soul is not superstition. All I've said is what Aristotle, Hegel, and others have said about form, spirit, soul

No, fool, you do not even understand what you're saying. You certainly then have no understanding of what they wrote.

At the moment you're like the fellow who goes to symphony and whistles along, thinking himself a great fellow for keeping up with the tune, without a clue as to how far, how much, and in how many ways he's all wrong. .

All I've said is what Aristotle, Hegel, and others have said about form, spirit, soul — Gregory

And some people that wrote in English called rights “nonsense on stilts.” It is great to assert preference in the form of an ethical theory, but we shouldn’t pretend that rights theory is somehow any more rational or any better at staving off the nihilists. As to spirit, it is no different - a way that you try to push off responsibility for enforcing your preferences on people by appealing to something beyond. If a soul finds it way into a freshly fertilized egg, chances are that newly ensouled cell ends up as goo on the delivery room floor rather than in the baby people are busily fawning over.

Regardless, your mystical event that converts an ovum to a rights bearer has yet to be recognized at law in the US (at the Supreme Court level) for purposes of either asserting a claim of state interest or refutation of a woman’s right to abort. The only people arguing about life beginning at conception are the people who are trying to argue for judicial fiat to become the law (however temporary) of the land and the whimsical creation and destruction of rights as the political appointees to the Court gain and lose power.

Arbitrary means random — Gregory

Ok, we have different ideas about what those words mean. I take random to mean having no reason fir a particular outcome other than chance. Arbitrary I take to mean having a reason, even if that reason has a subjective/personal basis.
Anyway, you didnt respond to the rest:

“These are attempts to find a base definition of what a human/person is, and many are based off of reason and biology, not randomly generated.”

A person is made from an egg and a sperm, from mother and father, not from one. — Gregory

I understand that is where you define personhood, at conception. What Im saying is that conception is just as “arbitrary” a place to define the start of personhood as heart or brain development. You have reasons for choosing conception as the starting point, the other side of view has reasons for choosing the formation of organs or whatever as the starting point. Both are equally “random”, you have just chosen a different starting point and for different reasons.

If it wasn't for the abortion issue biologists would be in agreement that human life starts at conception. It is the desire to make things other than they are they people say otherwise — Gregory

I think biologists ARE in agreement about human life starting at conception. “Human life” and “a person” are not the same thing though, so his is a non-sequitor.

What I was really hoping to get an answer on was:

That sounds like the soul is the merger of the soul and the body/matter, but thats a stretch of coherency. What is this thing that merges with the body to form the soul? The soul? That doesnt make sense. Where does the “pre soul” soul come from? The sperm? — DingoJones

Im interested in how you view the soul here…

Yes. Matter formed at conception is the soul. I don't subscribe to dualism. Humanity is the form but it is not separate from matter. The soul is all through the body and the body is all through the soul. We speak of them as two and must but I think they are really one.
— Gregory — DingoJones

Where does the soul come from? Does it exist prior to taking form in the fertilized egg? Does each parent have half a soul to share?
If the body and soul are the same, does the soul change as the body does?
I understand you are getting grief from people but please answer each of those questions, I mean them earnestly.

…so you aren’t interested in answering any questions, responding to any points or even providing counterpoints of your own?
This is a discussion forum, not a ranting forum. Can you please answer my questions and respond to points? If not, there is no reason to pretend youre addressing me by tagging my name to your post. Just leave my name out and rant to a general audience.

It's tedious to go over ontology with people who say life and personhood are not identical, equate moles with embryos, and defend an anti-soul, anti-God, anti-child, anti-family position like abortion. I did what I wanted to spend my time to do on this thread and if you didn't appreciate it I am both not taking it personally and not going to spend my time debating it further

A mole (or other cancer cell) is alive, genetically different, and not a person on your account. You are the one that says life is not personhood.

You didnt debate it in the first place, you preached it. Also I didnt do any if those things, i asked a bunch of questions to better understand your position. Primarily I was wondering about how you view the soul as it pertains to this issue. You didnt really respond to any if them.

So what were you setting out to do in this thread that you already accomplished?

Blame god, I suppose.

But really, your reckoning is coming. Those naughty cell-biologists are on track to convert any cell back into a stem-cell and then grow a clone from it. Unless someone stops them, all human cells will have the potential to be independent humans. And in that moment, where every cell is a potential life if science is just applied properly, you will have a world of legal non-sense on your hands. Each time someone takes a stem-cell, does some genetic insertion, and fosters a new life into self-sustaining existence, you will have to confront the Pandora’s box of bad philosophy, theology, and law you have wrought. Thank god there are unlimited souls available to god to put into cells going nowhere - we are going to need them.

And just wait till they figure out totipotent cells where they remove all native DNA and replace it with whatever they want. You can start implanting human created embryos into a humans with a functioning uterus giving birth to people that for all intents and purposes are people even though they did not come from the joining of a sperm and egg. Your lack of imagination of what people will look like in the future and where they will come from does you no favors in developing (or supporting) your eternal ethic of personhood at ensoulment.

P.S. For those in the cheap seats, see ectogenesis.

P.P.S. And for those in the even cheaper seats, see cloning in modern animal industry.

… Most cloning today uses a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Just as with in vitro fertilization, scientists take an immature egg, or oocytes, from a female animal (often from ovaries obtained at the slaughterhouse). But instead of combining it with sperm, they remove the nucleus (which contains the oocytes’s genes). This leaves behind the other components necessary for the initial stages of embryo development. Scientists then add the nucleus or cell from the donor animal that has the desirable traits the farmer wishes to copy. After a few other steps, the donor nucleus fuses with the ooplast (the oocytes whose nucleus has been removed), and if all goes well, starts dividing, and an embryo begins to form. The embryo is then implanted in the uterus of a surrogate dam (again the same as with in vitro fertilization), which carries it to term. ("Dam" is a term that livestock breeders use to refer to the female parent of an animal). The clone is delivered just like any other baby animal. — “FDA on Cloning of Livestock”