A human zygote isn’t a different thing than a human adult - it’s what a human being is when it is first conceived like the adult is what a human being is when it is grown. — Fire Ologist

It's true the acorn and the oak are the same species, so in that sense, the same thing, but the loss of an acorn is very different from the loss of a tree. The loss of an oak tree has a far reaching impact on the area in which it lived, just like the loss of an adult impacts children, friends, employers, etc., while the loss of a fetus is usually felt as the loss of what could have been. I'm speaking from watching people lose relatives in a hospital environment. Infants don't have distinct personalities, so when they die, though it may be devastating to parents, it's not like the loss of an individual with specific traits. It's the loss of what was hoped for, or maybe it's the loss of a potential person the parents bonded to prior to it's even existing.

The loss of an elderly relative is a matter of letting go of someone who has lived a full life. There's grief, but there's no sense that this shouldn't have happened. It's natural. The worst death of all is that of a child. It was an individual. He or she was a distinct person, and it's always counter to nature. It's never ok, and it can never be ok. This leaves me with the sense that we value real personhood over potential. Potential isn't something we can hold in our hands. It's only in our minds, you know? How would you address that?

For my part the focus on blastocysts shows the absurdity of claiming equality between two things that are so different. — Banno

Ok. I think you might not realize that there are 8 US states that have no restrictions on abortion at any stage. It's legal to abort a fetus that could easily live outside the womb in those areas. That's part of the story of abortion in the US. I think it would probably make you ill to witness that kind of abortion. It would me. So here, it's really not limited to a story about blastocysts.

I'm trying to avoid even "right" or "wrong" as the moral/ethical/social aspects of this are to me, just a total mess of a conversation. I'm just trying say what an abortion is, like what a car is, or what keys are. — Fire Ologist

Are you a progressive Christian? Is that the right term?

My question would be this: an acorn is a potential oak tree. We wouldn't identity the acorn as an oak tree, though. Destroying an acorn is not equivalent to destroying an oak tree. Do you see humans as differing from this?

Creeks are self cleaning. About every 100 feet, whatever you plopped in is now down in the sand. That's per a scientist friend.

It's addressing his position. — Michael

Fair enough. Others who used that terminology appeared to be reducing all abortion to zygote termination.

Dehumanization is the method. I’m curious what it does psychologically, as the behavior that commonly follows it is rarely moral. — NOS4A2

Hitler liked the word "vermin."

Warm showers? What decadence. You should have cold showers if you truly care about the climate. It's more healthy too. — Tzeentch

Wash in a Polish creek. Isn't that what you guys do?

Humans are single-celled for a few days at best. But no need to reiterate the position. — NOS4A2

I think the focus on the single cell is for the insult value. "Let me talk at you instead of with you. Zygotes aren't human and neither are you as far as I'm concerned.". It's not a strategy, it's just venting.

How long are you willing to wait to have a shower? — Agree-to-Disagree

I use an immersion heater. It takes about 10 minutes.

It appears that the threat from climate-change/global-warming can be greatly reduced without the need to stop using fossil fuels. A little bit of adaptation and conservation work can achieve amazing results. — Agree-to-Disagree

That would just delay the change by maybe a generation. Part of the problem is the ways people have adapted to a high energy lifestyle. So many people think they need a water heater continuously heating so they can instantly have a shower that takes 17 freaking gallons of hot water. A human doesn't need that extravagance, but people don't realize that.

Similarly, the majority of folks have concluded that an adult human mother's interests outweigh those of a human fetus' — LuckyR

And if the majority decided we need to have a human sacrifice to help the crops that would settle it for you? :roll:

Tell me what you think fo the notion of "overloading" logic with expectations. — Banno

It starts with the present King of France and why it's false that he's wise. How do we evaluate a proposition whose subject doesn't refer? Meinong attempts to help by inventing the idea of possible objects, which subsist instead of exist. The present King of France is such an object, and so the subject does have a reference. I actually like this view, but it was objectionable to Russell, who felt like this theory would cause the universe would become overcrowded, but also because this theory leads to misconceptions about what people actually think and intend to say.

Russell decided that it must be that this proposition is compound. When you start a sentence with The present King of France, you're asserting of the universe that it contains this object. And next, you're asserting of this object that it's wise. So now that we've broken the P down into q and r, we have a way to explain why P is false: because one of its parts is false. Everybody loved Russell for coming up with this way of looking at it.

@Banno
So one of the strawmen I think Peregrin is lighting ablaze is the idea that someone somewhere thought logic is the end-all to what goes on in the human psyche. No. It wasn't supposed to be that. I'd like to introduce Peregrin to analytical philosophy: the land of temperance and little tiny answers to little tiny questions.

what would you say is vibrating to produce the sound of music? — punos

I don't know. Maybe the piano is the universe.

But this is all happening because there is a kind of neural self-simulation still going on in the brain even when sleeping. — punos

What's odd is that we can detect this. The simulation has to be calibrated to the world. We can tell when it's off. Dementia is a case where the simulation is still working, but there's little to no calibration anymore.

Logic is supposed to describe the structure of thought, so pluralism is basically saying there are multiple ways to think instead of just one. Nihilism is saying there is no "way" that we think? Structure is applied post hoc?

Do you believe that this "phantom identity" is identical with what you call your identity, or is there another identity behind the phantom identity? — punos

I really don't know. Somewhere along the line I started thinking of identity as analogous to music. The bass notes are physicality, the middle tones are emotions, and the high notes are the intellect. Themes play out and change over time. The intellect is the only part that deals with ontology. To the rest of the psyche, everything encountered is real, so "real" is meaningless.

If so, then we may be in agreement, but to be sure: what do you think the nature of the mental property is? Is it contingent upon the physical, or can it exist in isolation from the physical? — punos

I think the mental is the high notes on the piano, present in some other animals, but more sophisticated in humans, maybe because of the big brain. It's a worldview mashup. :grin:

Your identity is formed in the context of your body, but once it is established, it can theoretically be separated from your physical form. — punos

This may be true, but I don't think we know enough about how consciousness works to make any assertions one way or the other.

But it's entirely conceivable that property dualism exists. That means that those who claim such a separation is impossible have the burden of proof.

Why do amputees experience phantom limb? Why does a limb they don't have anymore seem to hurt, and get muscle cramps where there are no muscles to cramp? — punos

I don't know. Why do you think it is?

:up: :up:

I'm still interested in the problem of consciousness, and slowly reading Sartre's B&N as an effort to think through the metaphysics of consciousness (cuz Chalmer's kind of just leaves it in the air) — Moliere

Ok. Please report back your findings.

So -- going into the transporter may turn me into light and recreate me on the other side, but my folk belief about the metaphysics of consciousness is that the "I" I'm experiencing now would cease to exist.

In that sense then only one person named Moliere has been on TPF, and the old PF. The ship of Theseus still belongs to Theseus -- but not because of the bits we can name. — Moliere

Is it because your body changes slowly, that your consciousness is unified over time? But an abrupt lack of body would obliterate your identity?

But your body is in a constant state of flux. Every seven years, all the cells (except neurons) have been replaced with new ones. So are you saying that you're constantly dying? How many people named Moliere have there been since .. not your birth, but that original birth?

I, for one, do not trust math — Moliere

Blasphemy!

We may be immortal for all that. — Moliere

Could be. Maybe we're uploadable.

I tend to trust procrastination. It's happening for a reason. Wait for the wave of inspiration and then ride it. Although, sometimes finishing what I started is a toughy. I can reward myself for getting shit done...like I won't eat lunch until x is finished.

Yes, folks focus (overly focus, in my opinion) on the life vs death of the fetus when addressing the topic of abortion, whereas the crux of the issue lies elsewhere, namely whose autonomy should supercede the other's. — LuckyR

This is similar to an argument made for supporting slavery in America. It's not about humanity, it's about whose autonomy ought to prevail. Bad precedent to set.

I've only been harassing you about the AMOC for years now, mainly because if it shut down, you'd have to move to Montana.

Although you would then be just north of the Yellowstone caldera, which is due to destroy N America. :worry:

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" --Edgar Allan Poe

The second season of Hellbound is on Netflix. It's South Korean dark fantasy with grotesque manifestations of Christian beliefs with a side order of Chinese cultural revolution. It's a little hard to get into, and fairly difficult to watch, especially the first couple of episodes of season 1. But it's fairly philosophical.

I'd thought of Meno's "paradox" as a precursor to bits of Wittgenstein- that there are ways of understanding (knowing) that are not the result of ratiocination. These include such things as "seeing as" instead of "seeing that", "knowing how..." instead of "knowing that..." and my favourite, PI §201, that there must be a way of understanding a rule that is shown in implementing it rather than in stating it. — Banno

I think Meno's paradox shows that some knowledge is innate. The story we surround that with probably reflects worldview. For Plato, it meant transmission from another level of reality. We might be mysterian about it and call it hinge propositions, or we can decide it must have come from evolution.

My definition of logic via the Meno is something like, "That which creates discursive knowledge"
— Leontiskos
People create knowledge. I'm not following what his claims are here. Is he suggesting that we remember logic from our previous lives? — Banno

Could be. Meno is part of Neoplatonic project building which wouldn't get much more than a blank stare from AP.

@Banno
I think Leontiskos thinks logic is the Anima Mundi. Very medieval.

Because what it means to be "truth-preserving" and thus a "correct logic" will depend on what is being preserved. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's ok for people to add on whatever significance they like to the word truth in truth-preserving. In the same way, if you lean toward ontological realism or anti-realism, you can add that onto whatever shenanigans you're doing. It doesn't change the shenanigans either way.

You can see the difficulty of equivocating or refusing to elaborate on what the "truth" in "truth-preserving" means here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Why does it matter?

Maybe @fdrake will explain what logical nihilism is?

When people writing on this topic discuss "correct logics," what exactly is it you think they are referring to? If all logics are correct logics then nihilism is obvious. — Count Timothy von Icarus

In the same way moral pluralism is nihilism? Yes.

If you assume deflation, I don't get how nihilism isn't a consequence. Truth just is truth as defined by some system — Count Timothy von Icarus

Truth deflationists usually think of truth as having a social function. It's just something people say. That's different from using the truth predicate in a technical way as Tarski did.

The article made me think about this passage from an interview with physicist Sabine Hossenfelder:

Q. You claim that a person’s information, if we trust mathematics, is still there after death, dispersed throughout the universe, forever. Are we immortal?

A. If you trust the mathematics, yes. But it is not an immortality in the sense that after death you will wake up sitting in hell or heaven, both of which – let’s be honest – are very earthly ideas. It is more that, since the information about you cannot be destroyed, it is in principle possible that a higher being someday, somehow re-assembles you and brings you back to life. And since you would have no memory of the time passing in between – which could be 10¹⁰⁰ billion years! – you would just find yourself in the very far future. — interview with Sabine Hossenfelder

I think we probably do a certain amount of explaining by way of the dictates of math, but much more frequently, we make predictions with math. We assume that if our predictions are wrong, it's not math that failed, but our powers of reasoning.

Why is math so faithful? It may be that we can't know that.

The position I am aware of is that governments have the duty to protect natural rights. For example, my right to free speech isn't given to me by the government, but the government must recognize it and protect it else it's an immoral government. — Hanover

This idea is rooted in Stoicism. The idea is that when things follow their nature, they thrive. For instance, it's in a tree's nature to grow toward the light. If it does this, it will become healthy and green. If it goes against its nature, it will shrivel and die. The same is supposed to be true for individuals and societies. It's supposed to be in the nature of a society to protect the well-being of the citizens. If it doesn't do this, the society will suffer from internal conflict and it will shrivel. So basically, good and evil are the same thing as health and sickness.

So, if people have the natural right to respect in death, it's obvious the dead can't enforce it, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means someone else must enforce it for the dead, just like an infant couldn't enforce its own rights without assistance. — Hanover

It just seems like this is pulling the idea of rights all out of whack. It's that tradition weighs in on what we should do with corpses. You can't violate the rights of a corpse. You can go against tradition.

Seems to me there are obvious limits here, but there also doesn't seem to be no rights. For example, if a person spends their life trying to protect an ecosystem by acquiring land to create a nature reserve, all else equal, it seems unethical to ignore their will and sell the land off to loggers. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I get what you're saying, but I wouldn't say that cashes out in terms of rights. With civil rights you have to be able to show up in court. Natural rights are enforced by nature, but not necessarily in a timely fashion.

Now, wills are a legal issue, but their presumably a legal issue because they have some degree of ethical valance. If people's identities and rights completely vanish at their death it's not even clear why their children should inherit their estate. But "dispossessing the widow and the orphan," is one of the key things railed against as sin/wickedness in the Bible and plenty of other cultural and religious contexts as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think Bob's point was that the corpse itself has natural rights. I think what exists are customs for dealing with the remains of a human. The corpse can't show up in court.

But that reminds me of a story I wrote once. This guy keeps seeing corpses, but the people around him treat them as if they're still alive. The welfare of the corpse is discussed while it's eyeball is falling out.

He goes in for a job interview and people are bustling around the boss, but of course the boss is a corpse.

The obligation to bury applies to every corpse, even criminals who have been put to death, the unclaimed slain, suicides, and strangers to the community. To be denied burial was the most humiliating indignity that could be inflicted on the deceased, for it meant “to become food for beasts of prey”. — Hanover

That's cool. It's like 'equality in death'. Thanks for the source.

For me, it is fundamentally about properly respecting life relative to the nature and Telos of each life-form (as best as possible). — Bob Ross

Scientists in the study of human origins place a lot of significance to burial of the dead. I've never thought through what that really means.

This is info from Wikipedia about fertility rates by country. The ones that are blue are negative. The darker blue countries are headed for demographic crisis where the economy starts shrinking due to smaller demand, and the birth rate drops even more due to a shrinking economy. South Korea, for instance, with a birth rate of 0.7, has passed a tipping point where they can't have a baby boom. They don't have the material means to reverse the trend. The cause of this population decrease is basically freedom and opportunity available to women. When women can choose not to have children, a pretty high percentage of them don't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Fertility_Rate_Map_by_Country.svg

With a decreasing but high-tech country, mobility might not be as big a challenge.