Pro-Lifers and Genocide

[PolySciGuy]

To PolySciGuy: Your ignoring of the data as presented does not make it invalid, nor does it disappear. I most certainly did not write anything about removing person status from anyone who already has it, or killing anyone who currently has legal right-to-life. Furthermore, just where did you get the idea that the lack of a legal right-to-life is automatically the same thing as a death penalty? Pets don't have legal right-to-life, but are they always killed arbitrarily? I recommend you be very careful about how you pull meaning from what others say.

I therefore await something better from you, in the way of a response to Msg #69.

Then once again, I will ask you. What is the difference between an adult human being with severe mental retardation and an unborn/newborn child according to your definition of capacity/potential?

IMO the only difference is that we know that the severely handicapped person will never get better, while there is a good chance that the child will become smarter, and have goals and free itself from this "bio-robot" condition you describe.

I do not propose you advocate for the death sentence of all infant children, I simply think you find it morally reasonable to kill one.

So the question stands, I realize that the elderly are no longer in the equation, but those with severe mental handicaps are, since they never achieved "person status" according to your conditions

 

[OKgrannie]

No.
An unfertilized egg does NOT have the characteristics of LIFE.
An unfertilized egg cannot grow and change.
An unfertilized egg cannot reproduce.

An unfertilized egg IS alive, it is NOT dead.

And an unfertilized egg only has HALF of the genetic makeup of a human. It gets the other HALF from the sperm.
A normal cell has 46 chromosomes. A sperm and egg each have ONLY 23 chromosomes.
An unfertilized egg CAN NEVER become a human (this means that it is NOT a human) unless you ADD something to it. (the sperm)

A fertilized egg CAN NEVER become a human unless you ADD something to it. (30+ weeks gestation by a living human) So why is a fertilized egg of any more value than an unfertilized egg?

Once the egg is fertilized with the sperm it has the COMPLETE DNA with 46 chromosomes and takes on ALL of the characteristics of a LIVING THING.

Again, the fertilized egg will never become a human person without the aid of a human woman, why is it valuable?

BTW.... When I say "living thing" I am talking about a living organism..... a living being.....
Not just a cell or even a group of cells.
My skin cell is living but it is not a "living thing". It is not an organism.

Then you should be more specific when saying "living thing" as that term indicates ANYTHING LIVING, including a cell or group of cells.

If my hand got cut off it would be living (at least for some time) but it would not be a "living thing".
A sperm and unfertilized egg are both living but they are not "living things".
Once it is fertilized it becomes a "living thing" or a living organism.

An alive thing is a living thing. A living thing cannot be produced from a non-living thing, at least at this point in scientific discovery.

 

[dottedmint]

I'm sorry I did not clarify earlier that when I say "living thing" I am refering to a living organism. There is a difference between a living organism and a livng cell or even organ. A living cell does NOT always have the characteristics of a living organism. There are some living organisms that are ONLY ONE CELL but not every single cell is a living organism.

OKgrannie; An unfertilized egg IS alive, it is NOT dead.

It is alive but it is not a living organism.

A fertilized egg has all the characteristics of a living thing .....sorry..... living organism.

A fertilized egg CAN NEVER become a human unless you ADD something to it. (30+ weeks gestation by a living human) So why is a fertilized egg of any more value than an unfertilized egg?

You are NOT adding anything to the fertilized egg other than food and shelter. That is what it gets from the mother. An unfertilized egg will NEVER become a human unless you add the sperm.

Why would a fertilized egg become a baby after 30+ weeks gestation while an unfertilized egg after 30+ weeks gestation would still only be an unfertilized egg if there wasn't something different to it?

Again, the fertilized egg will never become a human person without the aid of a human woman, why is it valuable?

IF we had the technology to supply the fertilized egg with the "food and shelter" that it gets from the mother it would become a baby. A newborn baby will die if it does not get aid from someone.

Then you should be more specific when saying "living thing" as that term indicates ANYTHING LIVING, including a cell or group of cells.

My mistake. As I said above when I say "living thing" I am talking about a living "organism". A fertilized egg has the characteritists of a living "organism". A sperm does not have the characteristics of a living "organism".

An alive thing is a living thing. A living thing cannot be produced from a non-living thing, at least at this point in scientific discovery.

An alive "thing" is NOT always a living "organism". A living cell is NOT a living organism. A fertilized egg IS a living organism.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Then once again, I will ask you. What is the difference between an adult human being with severe mental retardation and an unborn/newborn child according to your definition of capacity/potential?

First, I do not define "capacity/potential". I merely insist that the term be used correctly and unequivocatingly. Next, it could be stated that the average grown human has generally actualized his or her development potential, while an unborn or newborn human hasn't. My question to you now is, do you have any rationale for insisting that potential generally must be fulfilled? --And if you do, then what about your own potential to fall down a staircase and break your neck? It seems to me that without a very special rationale, then the potential abilities of any organism can be ignored, in determining its current actualized status. On that basis, therefore, unborn and infant and very severely retarded humans, along with the brain-dead on life support, cannot be described as being more than merely ordinary animal organisms. Note that so far as I'm aware, no other groups of humans fit this category; all others have actualized abilities that no mere animal can match. Well, there is one other extremely rare/small group: "feral" humans raised in the wild by animals appear to have suffered atrophy of their potential, due to inadequate stimuli during the early development years. So, if they were unable to actualize their potential to become more than merely animal organisms, then the logical conclusion is, despite their physical health and development, they also are merely animals; they seem to be unable to learn how to act as persons. As an analogy, in case the preceding is unclear, consider a thing known as "perfect pitch". See the "nature or nurture?" section of this link. To the extent that the average human can develop perfect pitch during critical development years, the existence of feral humans implies the same may be true for the set of abilities that we can use to distinguish persons from animals.

IMO the only difference is that we know that the severely handicapped person will never get better, while there is a good chance that the child will become smarter, and have goals and free itself from this "bio-robot" condition you describe.

I do not disagree that there can be differences in potential. I do still want to know why you think potentials must be fullfilled, or why you think you can prejudicially select one potential from others and declare only it must be fulfilled.

I do not propose you advocate for the death sentence of all infant children, I simply think you find it morally reasonable to kill one.

"Morally" is a bad word. That's because morals are arbitrary; they differ widely from culture to culture, and often are purely hypocritical (such as the Vikings thinking it moral to go forth and do all sorts of bad things to non-Vikings, but not to other Vikings.)
So try "ethically" instead. Ethics at least has a chance of being universally applicable; there are few self-proclaimed Authorities out there arbitrarily declaring it is unethical to eat pork, for example (they mostly prefer to say its "immoral"), besides vegetarians and PETA extremists --and they can be ignored so long as they can't back up their claims with data.
Well, if ethics is decided to be used as a basis for a culture, then the rules of ethics must have some sort of underlying Basis Statement to which everyone can agree. I have suggested something like "People need to get along with each other in order to survive the long long term." Then many things which are considered immoral, such as theft and rape and murder, automatically also become unethical; they do not promote people getting along with each other. Other things called immoral, such as orgies, do not automatically become unethical. (It would be unethical to participate in an orgy while carrying a social disease, but the orgy itself wouldn't be unethical.)

Note that the word "people" in the Basis Statement becomes critical. Obviously if people of different worlds can't get along with each other, the technologies that allow them to interact could also lead to obliteration, which does not count as "surviving the long long term". You may now see why it is necessary to have a generic definition of "person", one that doesn't prejudicially use "human" as its basis. For purposes of future diplomacy/survival, it could be very important not to insult an alien by treating it like a mere animal. Heh, if you ignore that, then in accordance with the Golden Rule, you might as well ask them to use themselves as the basis for "person", and to treat humans as mere animals!

Hey, talloulou, are you seeing the above paragraph???

Finally, and getting back to the topic of abortion, you may have noticed how my Signature asks you to think about how a generic definition of "person" could allow unborn humans to qualify. So far as I can tell, there just isn't any way this is possible. Nor would infants or the very severely retarded or the feral or the brain-dead qualify, either. Ethically, all could be treated like ordinary animals. Note that as a practical matter, every currently existing human that might not qualify for generic person status already has a kind of "owner", somebody in charge of its life. To that extent they already are being treated like ordinary animals! Culturally, it is generally expected that the caretakers will only take care of their charges, and not kill them. This is at least as reasonable as expecting that pets will generally be taken care of, and not killed.
Nevertheless, there are always exceptions to generalized expectations, and often those exceptions are considered reasonable, too. Such as abortions in the case of rape. Or when it is accepted that a brain-dead human really is already a dead person, and so it is OK to "pull the plug". I will not presume to suggest reasons why someone might no longer wish to take care of an animal-class already-born human; I can simply note that such a human is always adoptable --and if no adopters come forth, then it becomes ethically reasonable to consider the SPCA alternative, as exists for unadopted pets. Yes, I'm talking about killing them. Meanwhile, unborn humans may never be directly adoptable; pregnancy transplants would first require absolute mastery of the placenta/womb interface, with foreign-tissue rejection as big a problem as ever (and the cause of some ordinary miscarriages). In the frequent case when a pregnancy is simply unwanted, for the culture to insist that the pregnancy be carried to term is quite equivalent to insisting that an unwanted pet be cared for, without compensation. You simply can't force people to want things. --A corollary, that, to the cliche` "There is no accounting for taste." Besides being a denial of Free Will, one of the distinguishing traits of persons. In effect, therefore, an anti-abortion law would treat a pregnant adult human woman as a mere breeder-animal, so that an additional actual animal can be born. Why do pro-lifers not see the inherent hypocrisy in wanting to use their Free Wills to interfere with the Free Will of others, when those others are not interfering with the Free Will of still-others (simply because those "still-others" just plain don't have Free Will)?

So the question stands, I realize that the elderly are no longer in the equation, but those with severe mental handicaps are, since they never achieved "person status" according to your conditions

So? How is that relevant to an Abortion Debate?

 

[PolySciGuy]

So? How is that relevant to an Abortion Debate?

i did a bit of editing.... didn't want to take up so much space, and I think that you are right, subjective to your ideals.

answer the question.

It is relevant because according to you, there is no real difference between an extremely mentally handicapped adult and an infant/unborn child. So far, under our legal system the "caretaker" as you put it, of the child can kill its charge, while the "caretaker" of the retarded adult cannot, its called murder. So why the discrepancy?

 

[1069]

So far, under our legal system the "caretaker" as you put it, of the child can kill its charge, while the "caretaker" of the retarded adult cannot, its called murder. So why the discrepancy?

Because a "retarded adult" does not occupy the body of an unwilling human host, and sustain himself or herself by extracting the bodily resources of another person against their will.
If a retarded adult did, then the person whose body was being occupied against their will would be both legally and morally justified in extracting the retarded adult from his or her body, even if this removal resulted in the death of the retarded adult.
There is no discrepancy.

 

[FutureIncoming]

Then once again, I will ask you. What is the difference between an adult human being with severe mental retardation and an unborn/newborn child according to your definition of capacity/potential?

I answered that question in #79. Read and re-read it until you find that answer.
Furthermore, I asked you several questions, and your writing of this:

answer the question.

looks to be nothing but a cheap excuse to try avoiding answering my questions.
And if you don't believe what I wrote above, about answering your question, here's a hint:

On that basis, therefore, unborn and infant and very severely retarded humans, along with the brain-dead on life support, cannot be described as being more than merely ordinary animal organisms.

Finally, you might consider this old message as relevant data. Do keep mind, please, that the lead-off question, quoted in that message, is being asked in relation to the legal definition of "person" (not wildly dissimilar to something you wrote in #80).

Now you answer my questions.

 

[PolySciGuy]

Because a "retarded adult" does not occupy the body of an unwilling human host, and sustain himself or herself by extracting the bodily resources of another person against their will.
If a retarded adult did, then the person whose body was being occupied against their will would be both legally and morally justified in extracting the retarded adult from his or her body, even if this removal resulted in the death of the retarded adult.
There is no discrepancy.

Well, a retarded adult does drain other resources, most of which eventually translate into bodily resources.

Do you agree that everything that is alive has a will to live?
If so, then both the retarded adult and the child are having their wills infringed upon. The question now becomes whose wills are more important, or which wills are more important. The question now becomes, is the will for life more important than the will for "bodily resources," assuming they don't infringe upon the survival of the "host"?

I honestly don't know the answer to this:
If someone had a retarded conjoined twin and didn't want them anymore, is it legal to remove them, even if it resulted in their death? My suspicion is that it would not be, but I don't know.

 

[PolySciGuy]

I answered that question in #79. Read and re-read it until you find that answer.
Furthermore, I asked you several questions, and your writing of this:

looks to be nothing but a cheap excuse to try avoiding answering my questions.
And if you don't believe what I wrote above, about answering your question, here's a hint:

Finally, you might consider this old message as relevant data. Do keep mind, please, that the lead-off question, quoted in that message, is being asked in relation to the legal definition of "person" (not wildly dissimilar to something you wrote in #80).

Now you answer my questions.

haha I seem to owe you an apology... :3oops: I read the linked message the first time until I saw the link to another section which is what I thought you were directing me to. I would gladly answer your questions... if i could decipher what they were.

I will start with your challenge: You want us to give you a universally acceptable definition of person... correct?

I think ¿Manlow? had this table of needs. Starting with the most basic, the life-form in question would attempt to fulfill those needs in order move on to the next. The need stages can blend a bit, but for the most part must be completed in order.

1. Primal, Physiological - this includes food, water, all the basics necessary for life

2. Safety/Security - This includes shelter and basic social structure

3. Belonging and Love - More advanced social structures form. Need friends and a strong, intimate love relationship. (sometimes one can replace the other)

4. Self-Esteem - Needs to feel good about self, needs others to feel good about him/her. This is where respect plays in.

5. Self-Actualization - No longer worries about the self, concentrates only on the welfare of others. Welfare of others becomes and obsession.

I would say that a person can be defined as any singular organism capable of potentially achieving complete self-actualization. I think this is why people feel attachments to different animals, because we feel that they have made it further down the list and seem to be closer to person status.

This covers for all the responses I have seen you offer so far. Aliens can care for the wellbeing of others, and if they cannot, potentially, at all, yet somehow manage to work together to develop the technology you are talking about, they are nothing more than monkeys with guns

 

[PolySciGuy]

I saw another one of your questions, something along the lines of why every potential must be fulfilled.

I would argue that it is ethical for ethical potentials to be fulfilled, I would say that ethical is defined as choosing to assist someone on their path to self-actucalization, or basically acting in a self-actucalized manner. I would also say that it is unethical for unethical potentials to be fulfiled. I would say that to chose to hinder someone from their persuits of the path of needs is unethical.

No un-chosen actions are ethical or unethical, therefore my falling down the stairs is not ethical nor is it unethical. It is a potential that neither should be fulfiled, nor is it one that shouldn't (ethically speaking)

The case you present of me falling down the stairs as a potential

 

[FutureIncoming]

I would say that a person can be defined as any singular organism capable of potentially achieving complete self-actualization.

Why must the word "potentially" be included in that definition? Perhaps you haven't considered all the possibilties yet. For the moment, I will exclude "potential" from the definition of "person", so that I can use the word "person" without causing confusion, in the following sentence: I recommend you read the last part of this message, and then tell me why every potential person automatically deserves to be equated with an actual person -- and more, how can that be actually possible to achieve, along with long-term social stability?

Another reason to exclude "potential" from "person" involves Artificial Intelligence. This will require a lot of computational power. We know how to network lesser computers together to achieve the kind of processing power that the human brain can exhibit; we merely need to perfect the software, to create a true Artificial person-class Intelligence. The point here is that once such software is perfected, then every single ordinary computer on Earth is immediatly and "potentially" part of an AI. How can you ethically refrain from handing all your personal computers over, in order to become networked to help "persons" (when "potential" is included in the definition) become actualized? Obviously this dilemma does not exist is "potential" is excluded from the definition of "person".

Aliens can care for the wellbeing of others, and if they cannot, ...

This could depend on the definition of "others". Humans have a long history of caring only for a local subset of all humans. This means we can expect humans to have difficulty caring for a wide variety of nonhuman persons. And there is no reason to think such prejudice is limited only to humans, either. This is a problem that must be solved, and at the very least, the first step to solving it is to recognize that the prejudice exists, which must be overcome. I do wonder how many abortion opponents would cease opposing abortion, if they first really accepted just how much prejudice is at the foundation of their opposition, and second got rid of that prejudice. What would they then have, as a basis for opposing abortion? (Answer: Ignorance and Lies and Hypocrisy and Bad Logic, of course!)

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I would argue that it is ethical for ethical potentials to be fulfilled, I would say that ethical is defined as choosing to assist someone on their path to self-actucalization, or basically acting in a self-actucalized manner. I would also say that it is unethical for unethical potentials to be fulfiled. I would say that to chose to hinder someone from their persuits of the path of needs is unethical.

Disagreed. As explained below.

No un-chosen actions are ethical or unethical, therefore my falling down the stairs is not ethical nor is it unethical. It is a potential that neither should be fulfiled, nor is it one that shouldn't (ethically speaking)

AGREED. The Universe is ethically neutral, despite it being full of potentials that might or might not be fulfilled in total absence of, or contradiction to, Choice.

Which means that the first part of your post exhibits Bad Logic. If the Universe is ethically neutral, and a pregnant woman dies in a flood, then it cannot be said that there was something unethical about the deaths of her and the fetus she carried. It might be said she was unethical for choosing to live in a flood zone, but hey, the Darwin Awards are handed out for those kinds of unethical choices--and if the species benefits as a result, then how were those choices really unethical??? Furthermore, even if ethics always requires a "Choice" factor, then you need to answer the question of "who decides?" I note that you haven't disagreed with this:

the rules of ethics must have some sort of underlying Basis Statement to which everyone can agree. I have suggested something like "People need to get along with each other in order to survive the long long term."

Note that "choice" is not really a factor there; people need to get along, whether they choose to or not, see? And this is another way in which the Universe is neutral; you just don't "get along" with a supernova, not within about twenty light-years of it, anyway.

Next, is there any environment in which it is ethical to make more mouths-to-feed, when they cannot all be adequately fed? I submit that people, to best get along with each other, deserve healthy lives just as much as they deserve to be alive in the first place --and if the health is simply not obtainable, then the life should not be required to exist! After all, by the Golden Rule, if you can require people to be born into a disease-ridden and/or malnourished environment, then you should be required to be disease-ridden and/or and malnourished, too! The ethical thing is to work to eliminate disease and malnutrition from an environment (to the same degree that you personally experience), before insisting that even one more person be born there!

When the word "potential" is excluded from the definition of "person", then we simply look at the current state of any existing organism, and determine whether or not it is a person. I've stated elsewhere that the data strongly indicates that even if we arbitrarily include as a person every organism which is in the "gray zone" between animal and person status, no unborn human ever manages to qualify as more than a mere animal. They simply don't have the brainpower, even to reach the gray zone. And the ethics we apply to unborn humans would be identical to the ethics we apply to other ordinary animals. Otherwise, to apply toward-persons ethics to unborn humans, means we need to solve both the Malthusian Catastrophe and the Artificial Intelligence dilemmas presented above. The first requires infinite resources and is inherently impossible. The second means that nobody can own any computers, which is ridiculous. The assumption, therefore, that "potential" should be included in the definition of "person", is absurd.

 

[PolySciGuy]

Why must the word "potentially" be included in that definition? Perhaps you haven't considered all the possibilties yet. For the moment, I will exclude "potential" from the definition of "person", so that I can use the word "person" without causing confusion, in the following sentence: I recommend you read the last part of this message, and then tell me why every potential person automatically deserves to be equated with an actual person -- and more, how can that be actually possible to achieve, along with long-term social stability?

according to my definition, potential must be in the equation, becuase there are adult humans who have not reached this self-actualized status. According to the guy that had the initial idea, it is impossible to become self-actualized until age 35.

Another reason to exclude "potential" from "person" involves Artificial Intelligence. This will require a lot of computational power. We know how to network lesser computers together to achieve the kind of processing power that the human brain can exhibit; we merely need to perfect the software, to create a true Artificial person-class Intelligence. The point here is that once such software is perfected, then every single ordinary computer on Earth is immediatly and "potentially" part of an AI. How can you ethically refrain from handing all your personal computers over, in order to become networked to help "persons" (when "potential" is included in the definition) become actualized? Obviously this dilemma does not exist is "potential" is excluded from the definition of "person".

i thought of that one, note that the definition also says living organism, I don't think AI qualifies (i could be wrong though)

This could depend on the definition of "others". Humans have a long history of caring only for a local subset of all humans. This means we can expect humans to have difficulty caring for a wide variety of nonhuman persons. And there is no reason to think such prejudice is limited only to humans, either. This is a problem that must be solved, and at the very least, the first step to solving it is to recognize that the prejudice exists, which must be overcome. I do wonder how many abortion opponents would cease opposing abortion, if they first really accepted just how much prejudice is at the foundation of their opposition, and second got rid of that prejudice. What would they then have, as a basis for opposing abortion? (Answer: Ignorance and Lies and Hypocrisy and Bad Logic, of course!)

I don't really know what prejudice you are talking about. As far as caring in order to qualify for person status, yes, it only applies to caring about other people. This is part of the reason why more people like dolphins as opposed to... tuna (not the food, the animal), the dolphins exhibit behavior on a deeper level, and can briefly become self-actualized, this does not qualify them as humans, however, because they cannot potentially become fully self-actualized.

================================

Which means that the first part of your post exhibits Bad Logic. If the Universe is ethically neutral, and a pregnant woman dies in a flood, then it cannot be said that there was something unethical about the deaths of her and the fetus she carried.

agreed, but abortion and conception are both choices (usually).

Furthermore, even if ethics always requires a "Choice" factor, then you need to answer the question of "who decides?"

Who decides what? each and every person decides what to do in a given day. If an action helped another person along his path to self-actualization (this includes giving food, water, company, affection) then the actions can be considered ethical. If the actions hinder progress, or force them to backtrack (removal of food, intentional placement in dangerous situations) they can be considered unethical

I note that you haven't disagreed with this:

the origional got lost here, so I'll just try and remember: people need to get along for the long term survival of the species

Note that "choice" is not really a factor there; people need to get along, whether they choose to or not, see? And this is another way in which the Universe is neutral; you just don't "get along" with a supernova, not within about twenty light-years of it, anyway.

what is "getting along"? What actions are taken in order for someone to "get along" with another. I would argue that the definition of "getting along" is choosing the ethical decisions outlined in my posts.

Next, is there any environment in which it is ethical to make more mouths-to-feed, when they cannot all be adequately fed? I submit that people, to best get along with each other, deserve healthy lives just as much as they deserve to be alive in the first place --and if the health is simply not obtainable, then the life should not be required to exist!

I wholeheartedly agree, but life should not have been given a chance to start in the first place. Furthermore, the situation you describe is not so common. There are plenty of infertile couples, just begging for an infant child. So eventually that life would be great.

After all, by the Golden Rule, if you can require people to be born into a disease-ridden and/or malnourished environment, then you should be required to be disease-ridden and/or and malnourished, too! The ethical thing is to work to eliminate disease and malnutrition from an environment (to the same degree that you personally experience), before insisting that even one more person be born there!

I agree, complete social rewriting should take precedence over procreation, unfortunately, we have a more pressing issue to deal with, and our instinctual biological incentives tell us otherwise.

When the word "potential" is excluded from the definition of "person", then we simply look at the current state of any existing organism, and determine whether or not it is a person. I've stated elsewhere that the data strongly indicates that even if we arbitrarily include as a person every organism which is in the "gray zone" between animal and person status, no unborn human ever manages to qualify as more than a mere animal. They simply don't have the brainpower, even to reach the gray zone. And the ethics we apply to unborn humans would be identical to the ethics we apply to other ordinary animals.

but, like stated earlier, that would mean that a lot of adult humans with free-will could be considered mere animals, since they are only running off of baser instincs. They may aspire to get a good job, but it is for... stuff, or sex. Until they have reached self-actualization they are just a more sophisticated animal. Therefore, I submit that potential MUST be included in the definition of a person.

Otherwise, to apply toward-persons ethics to unborn humans, means we need to solve both the Malthusian Catastrophe and the Artificial Intelligence dilemmas presented above. The first requires infinite resources and is inherently impossible.

so why worry? If it is not possible to do, all tries will be failures, including yours.

The second means that nobody can own any computers, which is ridiculous. The assumption, therefore, that "potential" should be included in the definition of "person", is absurd.

see above

 

[FutureIncoming]

I would say that a person can be defined as any singular organism capable of potentially achieving complete self-actualization.

Why must the word "potentially" be included in that definition? Perhaps you haven't considered all the possibilties yet. For the moment, I will exclude "potential" from the definition of "person", so that I can use the word "person" without causing confusion, in the following sentence: I recommend you read the last part of this message, and then tell me why every potential person automatically deserves to be equated with an actual person -- and more, how can that be actually possible to achieve, along with long-term social stability?

according to my definition, potential must be in the equation, becuase there are adult humans who have not reached this self-actualized status. According to the guy that had the initial idea, it is impossible to become self-actualized until age 35.

This does not answer the last part of my request. For a species that Naturally has vast numbers of offspring, if members of that species can achieve self-actualization, then every one of those offspring must be given protections in accordance with the person status that you would grant to them, per your definition. And when they grow up and each one Naturally has vast numbers of offspring, each one of them also must be protected as persons, and so on, until the species suffers a Malthusian Catastrophe because it is physically impossible to support that many mouths-to-feed. (Isaac Asimov once computed that even us humans, with the measily 2% reproduction rate we had in the 1960s, could, given lots of technology like instantaneous transport and large-scale atomic transmutation --we could convert the entire mass of the Observed Universe into human flesh in maybe 6000 years. After which we all die because no mass would be left, existing in the form of air, water, or food. A self-actualizing species that has Naturally hundreds or thousands of offspring every breeding season (all of which would be persons, according to you) will run up against physical limits much more quickly than that. So, if a definition is obviously impractical in the long run, why should it be considered valid, even in the short run?

Another thing that your definition does not address is the possibility of encounting a youthful member of some self-actualizing species, but this individual is too immature to exhibit any of the characteristics that distinguish persons from mere animals. If your definition is valid in accordance with the request in my Signature, then you must be able to detect the potential that that individual has, to self-actualize. Without having encountered any other members of that species as a reference. The phrase in my signature, "universally accurate", means you may not ever make any mistakes in identifying persons from animals. So, tell me, how do you plan to identify potential-to-self-actualize, so that you can declare that some newly encountered very youthful/immature alien organism deserves to be called a person?

Another reason to exclude "potential" from "person" involves Artificial Intelligence. ...

i thought of that one, note that the definition also says living organism, I don't think AI qualifies (i could be wrong though)

Wrong or not, you are making the unwarranted assumption that self-actualization is a phenomenon that can only be linked to biological organisms. If that assumption holds, then one may deduce that all the pro-religion types are completely wrong in claiming that God is loving (pretty much synonymous with "self actualized"). You may expect vehement disagreement from them about your assumption, forthwith. Furthermore, you are implying that there is something unique about the human brain that cannot be copied into other hardware. Why? Biology copies human brains regularly and reasonably reliably (if you consider that lots of human adults are self-actualized). What fundamental technical obstacle prevents brain function from being copied into electronic hardware/software? At the moment we simply don't know enough, but that doesn't count as a fundamental technical limitation, to forever prevent copying. Our knowledge of how human brains work is growing all the time. You would have to provide a reason why it is impossible to ever know enough to make a copy (while biology mindlessly does it regularly), to say that an Artificial Intelligence can never exist or become self-actualized.

Humans have a long history of caring only for a local subset of all humans. This means we can expect humans to have difficulty caring for a wide variety of nonhuman persons. And there is no reason to think such prejudice is limited only to humans, either.

I don't really know what prejudice you are talking about.

This is the prejudice exhibited by KKK members in favor of white humans over black, or Nazis in favor of Nazis over Jews, or the prejudice of Hebrews for themselves over Canaanites, when that land was invaded thousands of years ago, and so on, endlessly. We may think we have nowadays socially grown beyond that, despite ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, the Middle East, Africa, and other places, but I could mention a fair number of classic science fiction stories that exhibit "humanity uber alles" prejudice, as if nonhuman persons are somehow less worthy than human persons. This prejudice even subtly exists in the whole fictional "Star Trek" universe, where humans have leadership status in the Federation --and no rationale for that was ever provided.

Well, why can't alien intelligences have also experienced equivalent prejudices? I assume they can, and therefore we need to be prepared for it, to fight the prejudice, not the alien intelligences. Similarly, without an extraordinary argument, we need to fight any prejudice that claims that humans are better than others, just because they are human. Because being "human" has nothing to do with being better; there are plenty of humans, like the brain-dead-on-life-support, that are obviously and permanently inferior to lots of other organisms, including mere animal organisms.

if ethics always requires a "Choice" factor, then you need to answer the question of "who decides?"

Who decides what?

Who decides what choices count as being ethical. Suppose somebody claimed that shooting all AIDS carriers (millions) was more ethical than letting them infect and doom ever-increasing numbers of the rest of the population (billions). I suspect some people would agree with that claim, just as I'm sure that others would disagree. So, who decides what the most ethical choice is, when there is a difference of opinion?

each and every person decides what to do in a given day. If an action helped another person along his path to self-actualization (this includes giving food, water, company, affection) then the actions can be considered ethical. If the actions hinder progress, or force them to backtrack (removal of food, intentional placement in dangerous situations) they can be considered unethical

But this doesn't work in such a cut-and-dried way with the above example. Lots of AIDS carriers don't even know they are infected. To exterminate them, or to even isolate them, would require a massive testing program. And the drug cocktails that can help an individual are expensive, and the victims tend to eventually die anyway, regardless of whether or not they have achieved self-actualization. Heh, I'm getting the idea that in this scenario, the best thing a self-actualized AIDS carrier can do, to help others, is to commit suicide. And how many would want to follow in those footsteps? If individuals choose to avoid the path to self-actualization, then why should they be granted person status? They may have the potential, but if they actively refuse to fullfill it, then what? You have attempted to say that this particular potential should be fullfilled, but you haven't said anything about why anyone should want to fullfill it! (Especially if they can have all the benefits of person status, without fullfilling it.) And you're going to have trouble getting me to me think, even for a moment, that self-actualization is something that is going to happen despite choices made!

{{out of space; more later}}

 

[PolySciGuy]

This does not answer the last part of my request. For a species that Naturally has vast numbers of offspring, if members of that species can achieve self-actualization, then every one of those offspring must be given protections in accordance with the person status that you would grant to them, per your definition. And when they grow up and each one Naturally has vast numbers of offspring, each one of them also must be protected as persons, and so on, until the species suffers a Malthusian Catastrophe because it is physically impossible to support that many mouths-to-feed. (Isaac Asimov once computed that even us humans, with the measily 2% reproduction rate we had in the 1960s, could, given lots of technology like instantaneous transport and large-scale atomic transmutation --we could convert the entire mass of the Observed Universe into human flesh in maybe 6000 years. After which we all die because no mass would be left, existing in the form of air, water, or food. A self-actualizing species that has Naturally hundreds or thousands of offspring every breeding season (all of which would be persons, according to you) will run up against physical limits much more quickly than that. So, if a definition is obviously impractical in the long run, why should it be considered valid, even in the short run?

because aborting fetuses will not prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, like you said. The only way for us to possibly.... delay the catastrophe is to colonize other worlds. Throughout science history, major discoveries have been done by single people. I understand that the chances are slim, but what if, through abortion, we kill the next Einstein? To me, the cost of abortion, outweighs the gains. (the cost is way more than that, but this is only for the sake of the catastrophe)


Another thing that your definition does not address is the possibility of encounting a youthful member of some self-actualizing species, but this individual is too immature to exhibit any of the characteristics that distinguish persons from mere animals. If your definition is valid in accordance with the request in my Signature, then you must be able to detect the potential that that individual has, to self-actualize. Without having encountered any other members of that species as a reference. The phrase in my signature, "universally accurate", means you may not ever make any mistakes in identifying persons from animals. So, tell me, how do you plan to identify potential-to-self-actualize, so that you can declare that some newly encountered very youthful/immature alien organism deserves to be called a person?

This is not a completely cut-and-dry solution, but it is an honest one: If I were to come to a new world that supported life, there would undoubtedly be a multitude of various species filling various niches. I would not assume anything. I would study the various creatures, and see how far they were along the path of needs. The more intelligent ones would, here I assume, be curious about me, and I suspect that intelligence has a lot to do with actualization. Basically, I would build a database of information regarding all of the different species and when I found one that was actualized, all of those with similar physical characteristics would be defined as a person, unless the original were proven to only have temporarily actualized, and no new evidence had come up

Wrong or not, you are making the unwarranted assumption that self-actualization is a phenomenon that can only be linked to biological organisms. If that assumption holds, then one may deduce that all the pro-religion types are completely wrong in claiming that God is loving (pretty much synonymous with "self actualized"). You may expect vehement disagreement from them about your assumption, forthwith. Furthermore, you are implying that there is something unique about the human brain that cannot be copied into other hardware. Why? Biology copies human brains regularly and reasonably reliably (if you consider that lots of human adults are self-actualized). What fundamental technical obstacle prevents brain function from being copied into electronic hardware/software? At the moment we simply don't know enough, but that doesn't count as a fundamental technical limitation, to forever prevent copying. Our knowledge of how human brains work is growing all the time. You would have to provide a reason why it is impossible to ever know enough to make a copy (while biology mindlessly does it regularly), to say that an Artificial Intelligence can never exist or become self-actualized.

I don't think that AI can't become actualized eventually. It just cannot become a person, because it is not a biological organism.

This is the prejudice exhibited by KKK members in favor of white humans over black, or Nazis in favor of Nazis over Jews, or the prejudice of Hebrews for themselves over Canaanites, when that land was invaded thousands of years ago, and so on, endlessly. We may think we have nowadays socially grown beyond that, despite ethnic conflicts in Bosnia, the Middle East, Africa, and other places, but I could mention a fair number of classic science fiction stories that exhibit "humanity uber alles" prejudice, as if nonhuman persons are somehow less worthy than human persons. This prejudice even subtly exists in the whole fictional "Star Trek" universe, where humans have leadership status in the Federation --and no rationale for that was ever provided.

This is because these groups of people think that the cost of these people being here is greater than the benefit. Racial prejudice is wrong, yes, but I think you will find that racists justify their actions by honestly believing that the group they hate is sub-human, second class.

Well, why can't alien intelligences have also experienced equivalent prejudices? I assume they can, and therefore we need to be prepared for it, to fight the prejudice, not the alien intelligences. Similarly, without an extraordinary argument, we need to fight any prejudice that claims that humans are better than others, just because they are human. Because being "human" has nothing to do with being better; there are plenty of humans, like the brain-dead-on-life-support, that are obviously and permanently inferior to lots of other organisms, including mere animal organisms.

agreed. Brain dead humans are vegetable (vegetative state) severely retarded humans are living like animals. Being human does not automatically make you a person.

Who decides what choices count as being ethical. Suppose somebody claimed that shooting all AIDS carriers (millions) was more ethical than letting them infect and doom ever-increasing numbers of the rest of the population (billions). I suspect some people would agree with that claim, just as I'm sure that others would disagree. So, who decides what the most ethical choice is, when there is a difference of opinion?

whichever choice that can be proven to provide the most forward progress towards actualization can be considered the most ethical. So in this case the most ethical choice would be for all AIDS people to stop having sex. However, in the choices you presented me, not killing them would be considered more ethical than killing them, because you do not know how many people they would infect, it could be 5, it could be 5000.

If individuals choose to avoid the path to self-actualization, then why should they be granted person status? They may have the potential, but if they actively refuse to fullfill it, then what? You have attempted to say that this particular potential should be fullfilled, but you haven't said anything about why anyone should want to fullfill it! (Especially if they can have all the benefits of person status, without fullfilling it.) And you're going to have trouble getting me to me think, even for a moment, that self-actualization is something that is going to happen despite choices made!

The road to self-actualization is instinctual. The only way you are going to feel completely satisfies once you are self-actualized is helping others reach self-actualization. If someone chooses not to continue down the road, then they cannot, potentially, become self-actualized, although I don't know why someone wouldn't want the respect of others, love, and friends. Therefore, in my mind, they are animals not worthy of personage. They do however have the capacity to become potentially able to self-actualize .

Ok, 3 Questions for you

1) What is your universal definition of person
2)If VHEMT or whatever is so concerned about the Malthusion catastrophe, why haven't they all killed themselves to insure the long-term survival of the species
3)please define "get along"

 

[FutureIncoming]

I'll just try and remember: people need to get along for the long term survival of the species

Heh, you are already misremembering it:

the rules of ethics must have some sort of underlying Basis Statement to which everyone can agree. I have suggested something like "People need to get along with each other in order to survive the long long term."

It is people, irrelevant of species, that need to survive the long long term. Not to mention that some sorts of possible persons, such as God or Artificial Intelligences, would exist completely outside the definition of "species".

===============
By the way, if you are formatting a message here with the default editor on the "Reply" web page, one of the available options is to "wrap quote tags around selected text" (the icon looks like a speech-balloon from a cartoon). You can copy/paste text from any other message to the one being edited. Then you can select and quote-tag it. I do this a lot, especially after I found out that the bolded "heading" of a quoted block can be embellished with some details of the origin of a quote (but not a URL, alas). I will use brace-symbols here instead of brackets here, so you can see what the raw formatting looks like:

{QUOTE=FutureIncoming, in Msg #79}the rules of ethics must have some sort of underlying Basis Statement to which everyone can agree. I have suggested something like "People need to get along with each other in order to survive the long long term."{/QUOTE}

If you copy that and replace the braces with brackets, and do a "Preview Post", you will see how you can imitate that to whatever extent you deem fit.
===============

what is "getting along"? What actions are taken in order for someone to "get along" with another. I would argue that the definition of "getting along" is choosing the ethical decisions outlined in my posts.

I am less restrictive. "Getting along" can consist of simple toleration. This is neutral in comparison to obviously-unethical stuff like persecution, or possibly-ethical stuff like aiding/abetting. Of course, the corollary to being tolerant is to also limit self to doing things that others can tolerate. For example, chocolate is one of those things that is, when you think about it, unnecessary for the achieving of self-actualization. So if you designed a plant virus to destroy cacao trees, the ultimate source of all chocolate, you wouldn't be acting unethically, would you? Yet most certainly that behavior would not be tolerated, either!!!

I submit that people, to best get along with each other, deserve healthy lives just as much as they deserve to be alive in the first place --and if the health is simply not obtainable, then the life should not be required to exist!

I wholeheartedly agree, but life should not have been given a chance to start in the first place. Furthermore, the situation you describe is not so common. There are plenty of infertile couples, just begging for an infant child. So eventually that life would be great.

I'll address the last part of that first. Read the second section of this. It describes an adoption-dilemma that won't go away, even if abortion is banned.
Regarding "life should not have been given a chance to start in the first place", this relates to the next quote:

complete social rewriting should take precedence over procreation, unfortunately, we have a more pressing issue to deal with, and our instinctual biological incentives tell us otherwise.

Mindless Natural Biology cares nothing for our opinions of the difference between persons and mere animals. Ignoring biology altogether for a moment, in my last-written Message (#88) I went into more detail about why it is flawed to include "potential" into the definition of "person"; I neglected to reiterate that with respect to Artificial Intelligences and "potential", the logic demands that we give up all personal computer ownership, so that those AIs can come into full self-actualized existence. Do remember that we can copy biological techniques of Evolution, in designing that hardware and software. You need to answer that (present a flaw in my argument for why AIs can exist) and not ignore it.

Back to biology. I see another thing you wrote that is relevant:

a lot of adult humans with free-will could be considered mere animals, since they are only running off of baser instincs.

FALSE. Free will does not derive from base instincts. Free will is, in essence, an outright violation of the Law of Cause and Effect. Those who preach "determinism" assume that that Law is inviolate, but they are neglecting Quantum Mechanics, which does indeed allow events to occur totally randomly, with no prior Causation. I submit that just as a gecko uses micro-fine biological filaments on its feet to take advantage of certain Quantum Mechanical effects, to walk on a ceiling, so does the advanced brain FIRST use micro-fine biological nerve filaments to tap into Quantum Uncertainty as a source of randomness, and SECOND allow that randomness to become associated with decision-making. It takes a lot of filters, to ensure that spastic behavior doesn't result, and that's why advanced brainpower is needed for Free Will. (Certainly some electronic version of this is going to be incorporated into True Artificial Intelligence hardware.) Free Will is a cause that is not itself purely an effect. Well, all ordinary animal behavior is pure stimulus/response Cause-and-Effect stuff. Base instincts, indeed they are! Even humans frequently react without invoking Free Will, but that does not mean this is the only way that humans can react. Being able to invoke Free Will quite literally means being able to act outside the box of Base Instincts.

Now keep in mind that many of the features of the human mind are also found in ordinary animals, to significantly lesser degree. It is quite possible that many ordinary animals can occasionally exhibit Free Will --in a fit of playfulness, why does a cat madly scramble toward the left instead of to the right? Or is that spastic behavior, due to not-so-advanced brainpower?. Anyway, persons can understand the ramifications of having Free Will, and only persons can do that. Those adult humans that you described in the above quote, as being like animals despite using Free Will, are almost all able to understand those ramifications, and thus they actually qualify as more-than-merely-animal. Meanwhile, though, unborn and even newborn humans fail to exhibit any Free Will at all. Pure stimulus-response is their only behavior pattern. They haven't developed the brainpower for more than that. Certainly they don't have the brainpower to understand it, even if they had it.

Getting back to life-existing-in-the-first-place, the union of sperm and egg is Natural Mindless Biology in action. It is not true to say that this is caused by sex. Otherwise there would be no infertile couples anywhere. So, our advanced understanding of both Free Will and the Law of Cause and Effect reveals to us a disconnect between the choice to indulge in sex and the union of sperm and egg. The first may set up conditions to allow the second, but the second is an independent event, simply because it is not guaranteed to happen. Indeed, when we know that even artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilizations can fail to work, we are irrefutably faced with the fact that fertilization doesn't require sexual intercourse. And on the other side of the coin, as even more supporting data, we know that careless sexual play that doesn't include intercourse can nevertheless be associated with a pregnancy. Sperm are independent active living things, after all, and for them a low-probability opportunity is nevertheless an actual opportunity. Blame them for pregnancies; don't blame sex!

That said, there remains the situation in which people use birth control that fails. Consider that if a condom works perfectly 95% of the time (I'm picking a number out of thin air, but not wildly inaccurate), then that means it fails 5% of the time. How would you like to ride in an airplane that failed 5% of the time? Do you think you might deserve compensation if you were intimately involved with one such failure? And how about having a backup plan? Well, abortion, approximately 50% of the time, is sought because birth control was used and failed. It is a "backup plan", equivalent to an emergency parachute for when an airplane fails. It is Free Will declaring superiority over Mindless Natural Biology, in exactly the same way that we choose to take pennicillin to deal with some disease organism. In general anti-abortionists are working to enslave Free Will to Mindless Natural Biology, in pure hypocrisy to all other instances when the two are in conflict. Your excuse to agree with them, that "potential" is as valid a thing as actually-existing self-actualization, is nothing more than an excuse.

Therefore, I submit that potential MUST be included in the definition of a person.

This is a proved-faulty excuse, too. Because I doubt you are willing to be consistent with that excuse, and ban personal ownership of computers, just so they can all be linked together to allow potential Artificial Intelligences to exist.

to apply toward-persons ethics to unborn humans, means we need to solve the Malthusian Catastrophe dilemma, {{which}} requires infinite resources and is inherently impossible.

so why worry? If it is not possible to do, all tries will be failures, including yours.

FALSE. Because my "try" does not consist of applying person ethics to unborn humans, so that we must feed them. My "try" involves allowing abortions of unwanted unborn humans, after pointing out their In-Measurable-Fact pure-animal status, to help keep the overall population from growing to the Catastrophe point. (It appears that your Msg #89 is assuming that "inherently impossible" meant something other than "obtaining infinite resources".)

 

[FutureIncoming]

When the word "potential" is excluded from the definition of "person", then we simply look at the current state of any existing organism, and determine whether or not it is a person. I've stated elsewhere that the data strongly indicates that even if we arbitrarily include as a person every organism which is in the "gray zone" between animal and person status, no unborn human ever manages to qualify as more than a mere animal. They simply don't have the brainpower, even to reach the gray zone. And the ethics we apply to unborn humans would be identical to the ethics we apply to other ordinary animals. Otherwise, to apply toward-persons ethics to unborn humans, means we need to solve both the Malthusian Catastrophe and the Artificial Intelligence dilemmas presented above. The first requires infinite resources and is inherently impossible. The second means that nobody can own any computers, which is ridiculous. The assumption, therefore, that "potential" should be included in the definition of "person", is absurd.

I added the red here, because of relevance below.

if a definition is obviously impractical in the long run, why should it be considered valid, even in the short run?

because aborting fetuses will not prevent a Malthusian catastrophe, like you said.

Sorry, you have misinterpreted what I meant, although I can see how you might have done that. I left out the word "therefore", as in "The first requires infinite resources and therefore is inherently impossible." Obviously infinite resources are needed to support an ever-expanding population. But finite resources can, when recycled, support a finite population. And abortion of fetuses is one way to achieve a finite population. It is not the only way, and certainly may not be the best way, but it does work, and that's what counts.

The only way for us to possibly.... delay the catastrophe is to colonize other worlds.

Sorry, but this is just a way of trying to increase available resources. It does not address the root of the problem, which will seek infinite resources in a finite Universe.

Throughout science history, major discoveries have been done by single people. I understand that the chances are slim, but what if, through abortion, we kill the next Einstein? To me, the cost of abortion, outweighs the gains.

Sorry, but this is perfectly cancelled out by every abortion of a potential Hitler. Why don't you instead ask how many potential Einsteins already exist in Third-World poverty, who are not being given the chance to contribute? --especially because you want to devote even more resources to making even more mouths-to-feed!

(the cost is way more than that, but this is only for the sake of the catastrophe)

Blather without supporting evidence is worthless. What evidence do you have to support that claim?

how do you plan to identify potential-to-self-actualize, so that you can declare that some newly encountered very youthful/immature alien organism deserves to be called a person?

This is not a completely cut-and-dry solution, but it is an honest one: If I were to come to a new world that supported life, there would undoubtedly be a multitude of various species filling various niches. I would not assume anything. I would study the various creatures, and see how far they were along the path of needs. The more intelligent ones would, here I assume, be curious about me, and I suspect that intelligence has a lot to do with actualization. Basically, I would build a database of information regarding all of the different species and when I found one that was actualized, all of those with similar physical characteristics would be defined as a person, unless the original were proven to only have temporarily actualized, and no new evidence had come up

Yes, that is an honest attempt, but it is still prone to failure. Furthermore, you are assuming you have access to more than just the individual organism that I specified in #88. Suppose you intercepted a small starship, and in it was a single lifeform. Is this organism a mere test-animal chimp-equivalent (to see if hyperspace is survivable, of course), or is it a baby Superman-equivalent in a lifeboat? How could you tell? Oh, and remember that chimps and humans have something like 98% of genes in common (I see you used word "similar" in quote above) --and that even among humans, genetic variation can be as much as 4%. Obviously different sets of differences are involved in those percentages, but is that going to help you reach a conclusion about that alien life-form? Hah!

Our knowledge of how human brains work is growing all the time. You would have to provide a reason why it is impossible to ever know enough to make a copy (while biology mindlessly does it regularly), to say that an Artificial Intelligence can never exist or become self-actualized.

I don't think that AI can't become actualized eventually. It just cannot become a person, because it is not a biological organism.

Sorry, but opinions are not data. Answer the request with data, please. For example, what does a biological organism possess that can never be copied into electronics? If you cannot answer that, then you may need to withdraw the claim being disputed. Meanwhile, as data in support of MY claim (less specifically indicated in Msg #90), skip down to the "Electrical Engineering" section of this link. We don't necessarily even have to copy existing biological systems, to construct a fully-person-class Artificial Intelligence! We can copy Evolution, instead, and let it do the work!

To reiterate, while I fully recognize that there is a lot of work to be done, regardless of how it is done, before the goal can be achieved, of building a fully-person-class Artificial Intelligence, you are making the positive claim that there exists some sort of show-stopper, to forever prevent success. You must identify that show-stopper, or withdraw the claim.

these groups of people think that the cost of these people being here is greater than the benefit. Racial prejudice is wrong, yes, but I think you will find that racists justify their actions by honestly believing that the group they hate is sub-human, second class.

This is somewhat irrelevant to the abortion debate; I was attempting to answer a question you posed, about not understanding some prejudice. In closing that subsection, I might note that this prejudice has truly ancient roots; when anthropologists began interviewing primitive tribes living in remote corners of the world in Stone Age conditions, they fairly often discovered that each tribe considered itself to be "The People", and almost all other humans were not-People. Often exterminable, too. It's enough to make one wonder what happened in Ireland and related locales, for the phrase "little people" to become both accepted and wide-spread! Crashed/stranded aliens, maybe? (Did you ever notice the similarity between "little green man" and "leprechaun"? And does Clarke's Third Law factor into that?)

Being human does not automatically make you a person.

Yet being human, plus having certain potentials, automatically does? This does not explain how to tell if the potenials actually exist (and are not superceded by some other potentials, that might cause a miscarriage or even a still-birth).

So, who decides what the most ethical choice is, when there is a difference of opinion?

whichever choice that can be proven to provide the most forward progress towards actualization can be considered the most ethical. So in this case the most ethical choice would be for all AIDS people to stop having sex. However, in the choices you presented me, not killing them would be considered more ethical than killing them, because you do not know how many people they would infect, it could be 5, it could be 5000.

But you haven't indicated how such a "proof" is to be determined. Nor have you considered that it might be perfectly ethical for AIDS victims to only have sex with each other. As for infecting even one other person, much less 5 or 5000, remember that contracting AIDS was originally almost equivalent to receiving a death sentence. And much of what we have done so far to stave off death has been more short-term than long-term in its success. Well, Death Row is Death Row, and if you put even one person there undeservedly, what should your own fate be? It is arguments like these, and opinions associated with "proven to provide the most forward progress", that makes me doubt you have adequately answered my question of "Who Decides what choices count as being ethical?"

The road to self-actualization is instinctual. The only way you are going to feel completely satisfies once you are self-actualized is helping others reach self-actualization. If someone chooses not to continue down the road, then they cannot, potentially, become self-actualized, although I don't know why someone wouldn't want the respect of others, love, and friends.

Pets have that already, without the pets being self-actualized.

Therefore, in my mind, they are animals not worthy of personage. They do however have the capacity to become potentially able to self-actualize

Sorry, but you seem to be contradicting your own definition. You would grant them person status just because they have the potential, but deny it just because they refuse fullfill it? But the refusal doesn't make the potential cease existing! You have as much indicated that others will try to get them to change their minds, after all.

Ok, 3 Questions for you
1) What is your universal definition of person
2)If VHEMT or whatever is so concerned about the Malthusion catastrophe, why haven't they all killed themselves to insure the long-term survival of the species
3)please define "get along"

1. I don't have a perfected one. In general, though, a person is able to exhibit certain characteristics to a degree that no ordinary animal can match. Some of those characteristics are Free Will, imagination, a conscious understanding of time, symbol-abstraction, empathy, creativity, a conscious understanding of death, and the ability to manipulate abstract symbols to arrive at correct conclusions. Some of these overlap. Creativity is often the result of abstract symbol manipulation, for example. Imagination is an essential part of empathy; a person can imagine self in the situation of another. And some variations may be entirely unique to persons; algebra is a thing that involves abstractions of other abstractions, and manipulations thereof. Other traits are welcome! Except for "potential", that is. A potential trait is not an actually-existing trait.
2. I'm sure its partly because their movement can't acheive its goal if it has no members. Pragmatism trumps theory. Besides suicide isn't the only way. How about universal sterilization? And I've sometimes wondered, If There Is Something To Religion, whether or not successful extinction would be permanent. Heh!
3. I amplified upon "get along" in Msg #90.

 

[FutureIncoming]

I'll bite. Who is she empowering?

Pro-Abortionists like FutureIncoming who seek to establish China like regulation so as to....how does he put it...."prevent a Malthusian Catastrophe".

There was more to #64 than I have quoted, and it was because of the rest of it, to which another person gave an adequate response, that I did not respond to it myself. However, I have just noticed that the first part, quoted above, deserves its own response.

Jerry, do not misrepresent my position. I may be a pro-abortionist in the sense that I may be willing to advocate it in various circumstances, but I most certainly do not to "seek to establish China like regulation" to promote abortions. I'm merely pointing out that abortion allows us to stave off a Malthusian Catastrophe for a longer time than can be achieved by banning it. Dare you dispute me on this? Let's see your data!

So, to the extent that we want to avoid a Malthusian Catastrophe, and especially to the extent that other forms of birth control fail to work, abortions need to remain legal. I'm not saying that abortion by itself is the tool to use to prevent a Malthusian Catastrophe. But I do think that if short-sighted people decide to stop wasting effort trying to ban abortions, without realizing the long-term consequences, then people like myself no longer have to waste effort defending it, and we can all move toward encouraging education about other forms of birth control (note that a fair percentage of BC-failure involve human failure to use it properly, a thing which education can correct) --and enabling access to those methods. The final result should be a lot fewer abortions, which means you can accomplish most of a ban, without enacting a ban. Kind of like this:

Back in the early 1900s both England and the U.S. were considering laws to ban heroin and various other drugs. The U.S. banned them, while England made them by-prescription-only. By the 1960s, New York City alone had something like 100,000 heroin addicts, while in all of England there were maybe 500. Apparently, England proved that having an alternative to a ban can be more effective than having a ban!

But are the anti-abortionists wise enough to learn from such lessons? So far, not that I have noticed.

 

[PolySciGuy]

Hey, thanks for the lesson in using this thing, but after I highlighted what I want, what do I click? I'm still really unfamiliar with it, so I just did this post how I know how. Also, just wanted to say that I really enjoy debating with you. You don't take any arguments personally and remain level-headed throughout

So if you designed a plant virus to destroy cacao trees, the ultimate source of all chocolate, you wouldn't be acting unethically, would you? Yet most certainly that behavior would not be tolerated, either!!!

But, why would it not be tolerated? One of the reasons is that it would put a lot of people out of a job, and they wouldn't be able to achieve actualization, therefore my system still makes it un-ethical.

the logic demands that we give up all personal computer ownership, so that those AIs can come into full self-actualized existence. You need to answer that (present a flaw in my argument for why AIs can exist) and not ignore it.

Because AI is not a living organism. Does it match all criteria of life? Cells, Growth, Organization, Energy Use, Homeostasis, Reproduction? I suppose that once AI can match all of the above criteria, without outside influence, it would be ethical to give up your computer to create an organism that could self-actualize. It would not be unethical not to, however. It would be unethical to remove your computer from the collective in such a way that it ended the AI's path to Self-Actualization

FALSE Free will does not derive from base instincts. Free will is, in essence, an outright violation of the Law of Cause and Effect. (Certainly some electronic version of this is going to be incorporated into True Artificial Intelligence hardware.) Free Will is a cause that is not itself purely an effect. Well, all ordinary animal behavior is pure stimulus/response Cause-and-Effect stuff. Base instincts, indeed they are! Even humans frequently react without invoking Free Will, but that does not mean this is the only way that humans can react. Being able to invoke Free Will quite literally means being able to act outside the box of Base Instincts.

Animals can choose what to eat, when to eat it, when to procreate, when to sleep. They may make decisions based off of drives, but they still have some form of choice, or free-will. They also understand the basic ramifications in the risks/benefits (if I sleep, I am more vulnerable, is there enough food around to provide the energy necessary for procreation) I think that people can make complex choices, but most inevitably end up to be self-serving. The fully actualized person would make choices that helped other people become fully self-actualized

Getting back to life-existing-in-the-first-place, the union of sperm and egg is Natural Mindless Biology in action. It is not true to say that this is caused by sex. {{it}} is an independent event, simply because {{fertilization}} is not guaranteed to happen. Indeed, when we know that even artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilizations can fail to work, we are irrefutably faced with the fact that fertilization doesn't require sexual intercourse. Sperm are independent active living things, after all, and for them a low-probability opportunity is nevertheless an actual opportunity. Blame them for pregnancies; don't blame sex!

I don't think that sperm can really be held accountable for much of anything, considering they don't have the capacity for choice. Just like a bullet, when someone fires a gun at someone else, and they get hit with it and die, it isn't the bullet's fault they are dead. The sperm is used as a tool. I hold whichever person(s) who is responsible for introducing a sperm to an egg, responsible for the conception and the inevitable life.

This is a proved-faulty excuse, too. Because I doubt you are willing to be consistent with that excuse, and ban personal ownership of computers, just so they can all be linked together to allow potential Artificial Intelligences to exist.

Abstinence works 100% of the time


See Above, haha, apparently I am that crazy

FALSE. Because my "try" does not consist of applying person ethics to unborn humans, so that we must feed them. My "try" involves allowing abortions of unwanted unborn humans, after pointing out their In-Measurable-Fact pure-animal status, to help keep the overall population from growing to the Catastrophe point. (It appears that your Msg #89 is assuming that "inherently impossible" meant something other than "obtaining infinite resources".)

This isn't directly related to the above quote, but from other things I have read that you have posted, I just want to clear myself a bit. I do not advocate for the complete and total ban on abortion. I believe it to be unethical and would want it to be gone, but that is impossible. Even if it were made illegal, women would find a way. What I cannot stand is how.... free it is. Young women are allowed to abort without parental consent. It is far too accessible and far too encouraged.

However, this is not about the practicality, this is about the ethics, so I will carry on.

Sorry, you have misinterpreted what I meant, although I can see how you might have done that. Abortion of fetuses is one way to achieve a finite population. It is not the only way, and certainly may not be the best way, but it does work, and that's what counts.

ok, I see. Why worry about it now though? Are we so overpopulated that a Malthusian Catastrophe is going to happen soon? I have already said that I agree with your position that there are times when abortion is ethically acceptable, namely when there is a net gain in people continuing down the path of needs. If carrying the child to term would eventually kill them both, or kill the child before it could complete any steps, then it is ethically acceptable.

Sorry, but this is just a way of trying to increase available resources. It does not address the root of the problem, which will seek infinite resources in a finite Universe.

agreed, but it is a way to delay the inevitable long enough for us to come up with another solution in a way that I can feel ethically sound with. Abortion is not an end-all way either, I believe that the amount of people who want kids is more than the amount of people who don't, it is an instinctual drive. I would be in favor of sterilization being monetarily encouraged, but never mandatory.

Sorry, but this is perfectly canceled out by every abortion of a potential Hitler.

Hitler was a genius, the way he chose to act out his genius was not "up to chance". Evil is not probable.

Blather without supporting evidence is worthless. What evidence do you have to support that claim?

There really is no empirical evidence for/against this next claim which is why I don't really ever bring it up: the factor of God, and that people are given souls upon conception, and that ending that life, and sending that soul back, is immoral in the religious sense

Suppose you intercepted a small starship, and in it was a single lifeform. Is this organism a mere test-animal chimp-equivalent (to see if hyperspace is survivable, of course), or is it a baby Superman-equivalent in a lifeboat? How could you tell?

Hmm.... that is a sticky situation. I suppose there wouldn't be any way, so since its potential for actualization has not been dis proven, I would have to assume it was potentially capable of achieving actualization, simply on the basis that if I were right, it (or it's parents) would be flattered, and not unnecessarily hostile, if I had treated it (or their child) as an animal. On the flip side, if it turned out to be the equivalent of a Terran dog, or something, it wouldn't take offense, and neither would the Alien nation.

Meanwhile, as data in support of MY claim (less specifically indicated in Msg #90), skip down to the "Electrical Engineering" section of this link. We don't necessarily even have to copy existing biological systems, to construct a fully-person-class Artificial Intelligence! We can copy Evolution, instead, and let it do the work!

Honestly, all that stuff goes right over my head, too technical. Could you help me understand it? Maybe I already answered that above

It's enough to make one wonder what happened in Ireland and related locales, for the phrase "little people" to become both accepted and wide-spread! Crashed/stranded aliens, maybe? (Did you ever notice the similarity between "little green man" and "leprechaun"? And does Clarke's Third Law factor into that?)

Sounds like a bona-fide conspiracy theory to me, that we could discuss some other time, but you are right, lets stick to the topic at hand

Yet being human, plus having certain potentials, automatically does? This does not explain how to tell if the potenials actually exist (and are not superceded by some other potentials, that might cause a miscarriage or even a still-birth).

I think you get me wrong. Being human, in no way, automatically qualifies you for person status. Having the potential to actualize yourself is the only criteria necessary.

There really is no absolute scientific way to prove possible actualized status without a lengthy experiment, much like other things, evolution comes to mind. But once it is proven to be relatively true, it can be applied in a more generalized manner, like when we say that since fruit flies go through evolution, so must people.

But you haven't indicated how such a "proof" is to be determined. Nor have you considered that it might be perfectly ethical for AIDS victims to only have sex with each other. It is arguments like these, and opinions associated with "proven to provide the most forward progress", that makes me doubt you have adequately answered my question of "Who Decides what choices count as being ethical?"

Yes, it is ethical for AIDS victims to have sex with each other. I intentionally left out the proven part, to show that is not an ethical to choose something that you do not know all of the definite ethical implications of, it is ethically neutral.

We know what killing every single AIDS victim will do, it will end the life of every single AIDS victim and prohibit them from becoming actualized. We do not know the long-term results of either. We do not know if we are saving lives that will become actualized or not either way, but the potential is still there.

Pets have {{the respect of others, friends, and love}} already, without the pets being self-actualized.

Because they are not trying to do so, so they are not potentially capable, so they are not people.

Sorry, but you seem to be contradicting your own definition. You would grant them person status just because they have the potential, but deny it just because they refuse fullfill it? But the refusal doesn't make the potential cease existing!

Here, I was assuming that we are dealing with extremes. The person in question is someone who chooses to never even consider becoming actualized. This is a person so miserly that helping another person never crosses their mind, except in some baser self-serving way



BTW, thanks for answering my questions

P.S. I have severely edited your comments, not in any attempt to misrepresent you, but the message is simply too long, sorry about that

 

[FutureIncoming]

after I highlighted what I want, what do I click?

See attached image.

 

[FutureIncoming]

chocolate is one of those things that is, when you think about it, unnecessary for the achieving of self-actualization. So if you designed a plant virus to destroy cacao trees, the ultimate source of all chocolate, you wouldn't be acting unethically, would you? Yet most certainly that behavior would not be tolerated, either!!!

why would it not be tolerated? One of the reasons is that it would put a lot of people out of a job, and they wouldn't be able to achieve actualization, therefore my system still makes it un-ethical.

I thought about the out-of-work thing, but that is a temporary problem that can be fixed by those people growing some other luxury item, than cocao. Heh, if you bought all those cocao trees and then burned them down, your "unethical" claim disappears completely, and this action still will not be tolerated. Because it interferes with what people want. It is simply a fact that regardless of what people need, they also tend to prioritize mere wants. And interfering with that is very seldom tolerated.

present a flaw in my argument for why AIs can exist

Because AI is not a living organism. Does it match all criteria of life? Cells, Growth, Organization, Energy Use, Homeostasis, Reproduction?

But you are making an unwarranted assumption, that any of those things are necessary for person-class behavior. Furthermore, any religious believer in the notion that "God is loving" is somebody who is fully convinced that biology is not at all necessary for person-class behavior; God is described as being non-physical, to say nothing of being non-biological. Therefore you need to support that assumption with data. Why is biology a prerequisite for person-class behavior?

I suppose that once AI can match all of the above criteria, without outside influence, it would be ethical to give up your computer to create an organism that could self-actualize. It would not be unethical not to, however.

Sorry, but now you are exhibiting hypocrisy. The abortion of a human fetus is the termination of an organism which has potential to become a greater organism. You are insisting that that potential must be fullfilled, if you ban abortion. Consistency requires that if potential must be fulfilled, to enable self-actualization, then you must turn over all computers, to become parts of AI organisms. Period. Of course, you can recant, and stop claiming that that particular potential must be fulfilled, and continue to allow abortion. But you cannot be inconsistent/hypocritical.

Free will does not derive from base instincts. Free will is, in essence, an outright violation of the Law of Cause and Effect.

Animals can choose what to eat, when to eat it, when to procreate, when to sleep. They may make decisions based off of drives, but they still have some form of choice, or free-will.

Beware of anthropomorphization. Insects are animals that are very obviously purely bio-robotic in their behavior. Mammals are more complex, and can process more factors when selecting a behavior, but that doesn't make stimulus/response activity into anything else. You need better data, before you can claim that the average mammal exercises Free Will routinely.

They also understand the basic ramifications in the risks/benefits (if I sleep, I am more vulnerable, is there enough food around to provide the energy necessary for procreation) I think that people can make complex choices, but most inevitably end up to be self-serving.

That last is exactly why most mammalian behavior is not Free-Will based. And regarding the first part of the above quote, remember that Evolution has had a hand in creating default genetic programs, to induce an animal to seek shelter for sleeping, or to "go into heat" when the body is well-fed. Beware of anthropormorphization. Also, because mere animals don't have much understanding of the future, they don't know whether or not a currently plentiful supply of food will remain plentiful. So, for example, kangaroos go into heat regularly, and if food is plentiful, a newborn will be the result, but if food is scarce, then the fetus will literally be killed by the womb and resorbed into the mother's body. (Fetal resorption can occur in other animals, too, including humans.)

The fully actualized person would make choices that helped other people become fully self-actualized

Heh, like writing laws to ban abortions and turn over all computers, of course. I predict this will not be tolerated. I notice you have not yet offered any explanation why it is necessary for some organism, that has the potential to become self-actualized, to actually become self-actualized. I await your explanation, therefore.

Sperm are independent active living things, after all, and for them a low-probability opportunity is nevertheless an actual opportunity. Blame them for pregnancies; don't blame sex!

I don't think that sperm can really be held accountable for much of anything, considering they don't have the capacity for choice.

That is irrelevant. We can hold sperm accountable for their actions in exactly the same way that we can hold termites accountable for their actions. Bio-robotic stimulus/response machines, both groups are.

Just like a bullet, when someone fires a gun at someone else, and they get hit with it and die, it isn't the bullet's fault they are dead.

So? The average bullet has no ability to act on its own; it's action is as "connected" by Cause and Effect to the shooter as a piercing sword is connected to a swordsman. But sperm do have independent action, and that makes a big difference. It is my understanding that there is research underway to enable bullets to go around corners and other obstacles; you can be sure that their use will become severely restricted as soon as they start causing friendly-fire incidents.

The sperm is used as a tool.

Obviously you have never heard of this quote before:
Robert A. Heinlein - Wikiquote

"A zygote is a gamete's way of making more gametes."

It means that YOU are the tool of the sperm! Go ahead, prove that that statement is invalid! Evolutionarily, it is perfectly valid; the egg exists before the chicken (and that-which-laid-the-egg was almost-but-not-quite a chicken). Sperm and egg are the descendents of bacteria that learned how to merge and swap DNA to better survive their environment. For more information, read a book, "The Selfish Gene".

I hold whichever person(s) who is responsible for introducing a sperm to an egg, responsible for the conception and the inevitable life.

Then you might as well also hold them responsible if a miscarriage occurs. You are exercising Bad Logic, since you have completely ignored this:

the union of sperm and egg is Natural Mindless Biology in action. It is not true to say that this is caused by sex. Otherwise there would be no infertile couples anywhere.

That is, if the statement "sex causes pregnancy" is perfectly valid, then there can be no exceptions. And remember that choosing to eat a hamburger is not the same thing as choosing to have a heart attack. Why do you therefore and apparently illogically assume that choosing sex means choosing pregnancy? The hypocrisy exhibited by anti-abortionists, when Mindless Natural Biology goes up against Free Will, is blatantly obvious. And this doesn't even count the even-more-obvious hypocrites among them.

Abstinence works 100% of the time

Tell that to the Virgin Mary. Or tell it to the biologists who know what "parthenogenesis" is. I will agree that abstinence is very effective, but I also acknowlege that most human adults like sex and will not tolerate much interruption of this want. Thus the need for other forms of effective birth control, besides abstinence. And since abortion happens to be very effective....

I doubt you are willing to be consistent with that excuse, and ban personal ownership of computers, just so they can all be linked together to allow potential Artificial Intelligences to exist.

haha, apparently I am that crazy

Consistency is good. However, until you can convince others why it is necessary for self-actualization-potential to be fulfilled, do not expect them to give up their computers and X-Boxes and microprocessor-equipped toasters and other equipment easily.

I believe {{abortion}} to be unethical and would want it to be gone, but that is impossible. Even if it were made illegal, women would find a way. What I cannot stand is how.... free it is. Young women are allowed to abort without parental consent. It is far too accessible and far too encouraged.

Part of the problem is that Natural Mindless Biology causes humans to become sexually mature in the early teens, and our "modern" culture isn't as prepared to deal with that simple fact as many primitive cultures were. Girls were typically married off almost as soon as menstruation began, in those cultures. I submit that the least we can do is accept fact, educate the children thoroughly, and then allow easy access to all possible birth control options. Because part of the problem that you have described is that those options appear to be less available to teens than abortion!

{{to be continued}}

 

[FutureIncoming]

Are we so overpopulated that a Malthusian Catastrophe is going to happen soon?

This is possible, due to the huge existing population and the apparent beginning decline in available resources.

I have already said that I agree with your position that there are times when abortion is ethically acceptable, namely when there is a net gain in people continuing down the path of needs. If carrying the child to term would eventually kill them both, or kill the child before it could complete any steps, then it is ethically acceptable.

Heh, then this means that as long as there is threat of a Malthusean Catastrophe, which would kill perhaps 99% of the population, including most youngsters mandated into existence by banning abortion, it logically follows that abortion needs to remain freely allowed. It is more ethical than the Catastrophe, see?

If you do see, then perhaps we could end our little debate right here. You have lost. The most ethical thing we can do is actually to encourage population decline, until we can be sure that resource-availability can be sustained for the long long term (like thousands of centuries). And allowing abortion obviously can help the population decline. Although education and BC-availability remain superior options, of course.

===================================

{{accessing space resources}} is a way to delay the inevitable long enough for us to come up with another solution in a way that I can feel ethically sound with.

I don't know that we have that much time, any more. It takes years to build infrastructure, and building resource-processing industries in space at $10,000/pound is far beyond available budgets. Even building enough to bootstrap the rest, while this is on the drawing board, it is proceeding too slowly to be effective when the crunch arrives (ETA less than a decade). I won't object to trying to do that thing, but I think it is more important to focus on reducing the birth rate. It will be more effective at delaying a Malthusian Catastrophe in both the short and the long term.

Abortion is not an end-all way either, I believe that the amount of people who want kids is more than the amount of people who don't, it is an instinctual drive.

Yes, but there are also cultural inhibitions that can be effective. For example, we could stop Welfare payments, and let all the children dependent upon that die. That would be only the opening salvo of a campaign: 'If you can't afford to raise kids yourself, then don't have them!" I'm not pushing for this, mind you, I'm merely pointing out that cultures have existed in which youths didn't have offspring until they were well into their 20's, because they did indeed have to afford them with very little assistance. I'm saying that the "right to life" mindset has made assistance too easily available, and this provides the equivalent of an "ecological niche" for those human animals that mindlessly breed at others' expense. So, if we could find an ethical way to limit this assistance, then birthrates that rely on it should drop.

I would be in favor of sterilization being monetarily encouraged, but never mandatory.

Yes, that could help, too. The more possibilities, the better!

Hitler was a genius, the way he chose to act out his genius was not "up to chance". Evil is not probable.

First, almost everyone appears able to exhibit some genius at something-or-other.

There isn't anything that can be made foolproof, because fools can be so ingenious

Next, evil is merely excess selfishness, and selfishness is a certainty. We wouldn't exist without it; every time you feed your face, you are exhibiting selfishness. What other organisms died just so you could feed? Nevertheless, this degree of selfishness is not considered to be excessive, since every human is the same that way. So we might say that the main difference between Einstein and Hitler was that Einstein was self-actualized, while Hitler wasn't. I therefore stand by what I wrote:

{{every abortion of a potential Einstein}} is perfectly cancelled out by every abortion of a potential Hitler.

Indeed, due the apparent rarity of self-actualized people, it may be true that more Hitlers get aborted than Einsteins, and I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Especially since we have lots of existing geniuses who merely need to become self-actualized, so why make more, until after that has been accomplished?

There really is no empirical evidence for/against this next claim which is why I don't really ever bring it up: the factor of God, and that people are given souls upon conception, and that ending that life, and sending that soul back, is immoral in the religious sense

The lack of evidence doesn't matter in this case, since the logic is fatally flawed. See Question 5 at this linked page. Would you care to answer that? Regardless, I might mention certain other evidence that souls may exist, but when investigated in further detail, this line of research appears to conclude that souls only become involved with bodies at birth, and not before. Which makes abortion still-ethical. Immortal souls can afford to wait to be born into families that want them, after all. The religion-spouters simply can't win the abortion debate, any more than you can. Because I have yet to see any anti-abortion argument posted by anyone that is not based on Inadequate Data (ignorance) and/or Invalid Data (lies) and/or Prejudice and/or Hypocrisy and/or Bad Logic. In your case, the fundamental error is Invalid Data, the claim that the potential to achieve self-actualization must be fulfilled. (Heh, if souls exist, they don't even need bodies, to achieve it. Bodies are to souls as "avatars" are to players in the game of "Second Life". Something to do, when you are immortal.)

Suppose you intercepted a small starship, and in it was a single lifeform. Is this organism a mere test-animal chimp-equivalent (to see if hyperspace is survivable, of course), or is it a baby Superman-equivalent in a lifeboat? How could you tell?

Hmm.... that is a sticky situation. I suppose there wouldn't be any way,

EXACTLY. Which means your definition of "person", to include "potential", doesn't work with universal accuracy, to meet the challenge in my Signature.

all that stuff {{about genetic algorithms}} goes right over my head, too technical. Could you help me understand it?

Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation
Perhaps. You could try reading the first parts of that Web page; it is a reasonably gentle introduction. But the bottom line is that I know what I'm talking about, when I say that there is nothing known that can stop us from one day building a fully-person-class Artificial Intelligence. I therefore repeat, if you want to claim it is impossible, you need to specify the thing that can stop us, even in theory, from building one. Note that if the "souls" issue is introduced, that actually makes the job easier! Because all we have to do is build a machine such that a soul would want to inhabit it, equivalent to whatever a human body offers that induces a soul to want to inhabit it. We need not actually devise the person-class-behavior-algorithms for this machine, since the soul brings that with itself. And so this machine would be exactly as much a person as a human, see? Heh, perhaps we should try to build such a machine, just to prove that souls exist! (After which, of course, there would be ZERO requirement to build more such machines just for souls to inhabit, exactly as there is zero requirement for unborn humans to be carried to term, just so immortal/bored souls can inhabit them.)

I think you get me wrong. Being human, in no way, automatically qualifies you for person status. Having the potential to actualize yourself is the only criteria necessary.

And so you claim that the average human fetus has this potential and shouldn't be aborted, without even being able to prove that the average human adult has it? What kind of logic is that?

when we say that since fruit flies go through evolution, so must people.

Do not confuse the species with the individual. Have you read much about KoKo the gorilla? Note that to whatever extent she may qualify for person status, the average human qualfied at least that much, also, more than a million years ago, and as a species we have indeed "gone through evolution" since. Furthermore, there is no "must" involved here; evolution is simply something that happens. It is a species-response to various stimuli in the environment. Cause-and-Effect. That's why humans in Africa are black, with lots of UV-blocking melanin in their skins, while Arctic inhabitants are pale. In this example the species was widespread enough for separated populations to begin evolving in different directions. And if the populations had stayed separated for some hundreds of millenia, they likely would no longer be able to interbreed, having become distinct species of "human". That it won't happen now is probably a Good Thing. (Stupid #&@ "race" $*!# prejudice....%$!@#)

So as for the individual, you are back at the unsupported claim that the potential to self-actualized must be fulfilled. You may have indicated how desirable/wanted such a result is, but that is not the same thing as an Objective Reason. Does the Universe benefit if various organisms are self-actualized? Does it even matter, when all the stars will die of old age in a few trillion years, and nothing will exist that can support Life?

{{to be concluded}}

 

[FutureIncoming]

I intentionally left out the proven part, to show that is not an ethical to choose something that you do not know all of the definite ethical implications of, it is ethically neutral.

Heh. That means it is ethically neutral to claim that "potential" should be part of the definition of "person". And when that is the case, abortion of human animal nonpersons is not unethical.

We know what killing every single AIDS victim will do, it will end the life of every single AIDS victim and prohibit them from becoming actualized. We do not know the long-term results of either. We do not know if we are saving lives that will become actualized or not either way, but the potential is still there.

Which no longer matters, since your definition of "person" fails to meet the challenge in my Signature. Also, I sometimes wonder how may lives are being ruined by pollution associated with manufacturing drugs so that AIDS victims can be kept alive.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch."

If someone chooses not to continue down the road, then they cannot, potentially, become self-actualized, although I don't know why someone wouldn't want the respect of others, love, and friends.

I added the red here, so that it can be seen that this is my answer to that "why":

Pets have that already, without the pets being self-actualized.

Because they are not trying to do so, so they are not potentially capable, so they are not people.

You seem to have missed the point. The existence of pets is proof that you don't have to be self-actualized to experience respect, love, and friends. And since Mindless Natural Biology tends to take the easy way to do things, it follows that if achieving those things is easier by being pet-like than by becoming self-actualized, then your "why" in #89 is answered!

the refusal {{to self-actualize}} doesn't make the potential cease existing!

Here, I was assuming that we are dealing with extremes. The person in question is someone who chooses to never even consider becoming actualized. This is a person so miserly that helping another person never crosses their mind, except in some baser self-serving way

Au contraire! See the "pets" scenario above.

 

[moolanus]

If that is the case, then every person who has a baby is adding to the Malthusian Catastrophe, and therefore, we should all be executed, which creates genocide. Furthermore, by executing all 'pro-lifers', you would be creating a genocide. There is no winning combination but killing anyone is not going to solve the problem, we already have enough killing as it is.

 

[FutureIncoming]

If that is the case, then every person who has a baby is adding to the Malthusian Catastrophe, and therefore, we should all be executed, which creates genocide. Furthermore, by executing all 'pro-lifers', you would be creating a genocide. There is no winning combination but killing anyone is not going to solve the problem, we already have enough killing as it is.

PARTLY WRONG; PARTLY CORRECT. Rough figures are that worldwide there are something like 80 million more births than deaths annually. But that datum doesn't let you know that there are roughly 50 million deaths annually. So, a rough total of 130 million births annually. I'll mention the rough global abortion rate of something like 40 million annually. Remember that those 130 million births are occurring despite the 40 million abortions. If the abortions were stopped, the immediate effect is 120 million extra births than deaths annually, not 80 million.

Next, a Malthusian Catastrophe is primarily caused when a population fails to stop increasing. This means that only the 80 million extra births each year are directly contributing to a future Malthusian Catastrophe. The initial 50 million births merely hold the population at some even level. They only indirectly contribute to a future Malthusian Catastrophe, because a secondary factor is the depletion of resources. There is some level at which resources can be sustained basically indefinitely; any significantly higher population level than that will eventually experience a Malthusian Catastrophe. Even without 80 million extra mouths annually, global population currently appears to be too much for long-term sustainability.

I say we should focus on stopping the extra 80 million births first. Then we would gain some time to figure out (A) what the sustainable population size is, and (B) how to get there equitably. Maybe a lottery. Consider that a sustainable population size will have a certain number of births each year, likely way less than the current 50 million deaths each year. If births are allowed by lottery of exactly that number, then Natural attrition will eventually bring the population to the sustainable level.

There should not be any great need to shoot hordes of people unless it is Too Late --in which case shooting hordes of people merely becomes one part of an overall happening Malthusian Catastrophe.

 

[Cephus]

We’re headed for some pretty big wars, solar activity, global warming, etc, etc, so I can't say I care in the slightest about a Malthusian Catastrophe 'cuz I just don't think our population will ever get that big.

Oh yeah, we need to breed 'em faster so they can all join the military and get killed in more meaningless wars! It's the neocon way, after all!