What Makes Us Human?
So I was having an online discussion with my younger brother a little more than a week ago about abortion. Being a devout and pro-life Catholic he held the opinion that life starts at conception, that it a fertilized egg is human and should be treated as human because it is a unique life different than the host parent. I have also been reading bio-ethics and many different places on the debate and they all seem to revolve around trying to justify scientifically what I can best describe as trying to answer the question, "when is an embryo tantamount to a human being?"
Of course, that one question gave way to the larger question, "What makes us human?" Where do we define the limits of humanity? Is it strictly in a biological sense as in form, shape, and structure? Is it in potential in the case of infants? Is it in behavior; could someone act in a way that they are no longer considered, if even for a moment, a human? Is it in ability whether physical or mental? Is humanity a transitive property; in other words, is it a label that can be taken away or does it last regardless once it has been gained? Are their varying degrees of humanity where a person could be considered "more human" than someone else?
I am very curious to hear all of your thoughts and ideas!
Tags: humanity
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on -
@John Major
OK, we'll agree to disagree. Doesn't seem capable of proof. The evidence for me comes from evolution. The struggle to survive, to preserve life, marks its value. You came close to agreeing with me when you said that the struggle for survival is valuable. Why would it be vauable if that which it sought to preserve, the life, was not itself valubale?
What you don't get is that survival value is something totally different from value as in the value of gold or of a human life. The same word in terms of spelling and pronunciation, but the two senses of "value" are as different in meaning as the two different meanings of "cleave" (to cling to something, to cut something into two pieces).
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Permalink Reply by John Major on -
Well I didn't say survival value - that's the ability of an organism to survive. I described that which survival value seeks to preserve - life.
When you value a piece of gold, a baby, a terse response on a forum, you do that because it is in your nature to do so, right? But if you have no choice but to value that gold, baby, etc, how can the term 'value' have any meaning for you? Can anything therefore have value? You are not freely choosing or assigning relative weight.
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Permalink Reply by Kris Feenstra on -
But if you have no choice but to value that gold, baby, etc, how can the term 'value' have any meaning for you?
I don't get this line of reasoning. To value something is simply to recognize its relative worth. It doesn't require choice. I do not choose for pumpkin pie to be tasty to me, but that doesn't alter the fact that it is. I do not choose the ability to cognitively appreciate that it tastes good, neither do I choose to desire good tastes, yet again, that lack of choice does not alter either of these things.
It seems to be that value easily exists apart from the ability to choose what to value. So I have to ask, what is the value of choice in this equation? I am a limited being with limited properties and limited mechanics which I cannot supersede. I value because it is part of my mechanics to do so. By definition, I will do what I will do and will not do what I will not do. I will choose what I choose and will not choose what I will not choose. Your statement seems to imply that, because you cannot do what you will not do, what you will do is somehow devalued.
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Permalink Reply by John Kelly on -
I agree, because I consider value to be simply measurements that are taken completely related to the need to act, but not being able to know what is the best action. So we measure out things and call those measurements values. It was actually something that triggered my deconversion.
Any action other than the best is a mis-measurement. Because of that, any better action will always have a higher value than any number other mis-measurements that come across as being other potential things you can do. The mis-measurements are just worse decisions. All those extra decisions that you seem to have freedom of will to do, really can't have value, because value is just measuring in order to figure out the best action.
I compare it to measuring tape, because it shows in a good visual manner how potentialities are so pointless with measurement. There are a lot of potential measurements on a measuring tape, but the only one you are concerned with when measuring something like a window, is the measurements of that window. Those other potential measurements just don't matter. Other potential mis-measurments don't matter with any kind of measurement, beyond that of the most accurate one you can get.
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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Well I didn't say survival value - that's the ability of an organism to survive. I described that which survival value seeks to preserve - life.
You talk about survival value as if it's a separate intelligent being because you describe it as seeking something.
Let's be precise about what a survival value actually is. It is some feature, behavior, appearance, or other characteristic which happens to function to preserve more lives than it snuffs out.
When we talk about the value of something, be it a hunk of gold, a piece of real estate, or a person, that is the value it has to others. Neither gold, nor real estate, nor people have an innate value. Some people like to talk that way, but it is not a way of talking one can support as if it's a fact.
I can prove how much gold or real estate is worth. We don't like to think about placing value on human life, and yet it is done all the time. It's done by companies deciding how safe to make their products. It's done by military commanders weighing the cost of the lives likely to be lost in an operation vs. the advantage gained, etc.
A human life has the worth someone gives it. Yes, you can give your own life a value in your mind, but if no one else agrees with you (think of how most people regard Jerry Sandusky) your self-evaluation won't count for much. You can clutch it to your heart, but otherwise it's meaningless unless others agree with you.
Real value comes from an external source. The value of a human life isn't innate any more than the value of a hunk of gold.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on -
Blaine - stretch your memory all the way back to the very first episode of "Mork and Mindy," - you know, before Williams grew a back-beard - Mork explained he was rich, that when he left Ork, he had taken a whole bag of the most precious mineral on the planet. Mindy asked what it was, gold? diamonds? Mork answered, "Better than that - SAND!"
A hunk of gold has no value to a man from Ork.
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Permalink Reply by archaeopteryx on
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RE: "There Ya' Go!"
Not to correct you Blaine, but it's "'ere Ya Go!"
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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When you value a piece of gold, a baby, a terse response on a forum, you do that because it is in your nature to do so, right? But if you have no choice but to value that gold, baby, etc, how can the term 'value' have any meaning for you? Can anything therefore have value? You are not freely choosing or assigning relative weight.
I'm pretty sure that saying "I believe in value and I have free will" means exactly the same as "I believe in value" because "free will" is a meaningless string of words (I won't dignify it as a concept until someone can explain to me what it means without conundrum or contradiction).
If words had no meaning for me, I wouldn't be able to form intelligible sentences relevant to a subject matter and context.
Simply because I do what I do because of who I am, what I know, and the circumstances I find myself in, and in conformity with physical laws, doesn't mean words ("value" included) have no meaning for me.
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Permalink Reply by onecae on -
One can experience imagining a moment that has not occurred, then observe the imagined moment as occurring, then observe the experience as having had occurred. What is known as “imagined,” becomes what is known as “fact.” Some know this happens; but how does it happen and how do they know?
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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It's called "coincidence," and coincidences are fairly common. They need no explanation because they just happen.
I imagine getting hired. I apply and am hired. Imagination becomes fact. Just a coincidence.
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Permalink Reply by onecae on
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It should look like this: "I imagine getting hired. I get hired." No need to toss in the "I apply" part. Imagining getting hired becomes a fact when occurs, as does getting hired become a fact when it occurs. The process is fairly common in my experience as well. Consider just the part about imagining; something new is made available.
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Permalink Reply by Unseen on
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Still just a coincidence, and coincidences happen all the time. We just notice some of them for some reason. All a coincidence is, is the incidents of two events that can be related to each other in some way (they happened at the same time, they happened one after the other, they can be related conceptually).
If I go to the grocery store and run into someone I know, that is a coincidence because it means something to me. However, I am there coincidentally with everyone else in the store, but those coincidences are meaningless to me, so I don't refer to them as coincidences.
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