Subject:
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Re: From Harry Browne
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 11 Nov 2000 12:09:33 GMT
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Viewed:
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584 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Dave Schuler writes:
> Fair enough. However, I accept the definition of death as the cessation
> of brain function. That is, life does not exist in a meaningful way where
> brain function does not exist.
Meaningful way? It sounds like you're defining something other than life.
Evidence includes the fact that carrots are alive and never have brain
function.
> Therefore, it follows that life begins with
> the beginning of brain function.
I don't get the whole life befins argument. Isn't it obvious that life never
stopped? More than a billion years ago, a kind of life evolved that passed
living tissue on out of a pre-individual state into an individual state. My
sperm is alive. My wife's eggs are live. When they get together, they stay
alive the whole time. And then after a bit, there is a fetus that is also
alive.
> Prior to the onset of brain function the
> embryo is not a distinct life and may be terminated.
OK, it's the distinctness that you're choosing to value.
There is, I believe, substantial strength to the argument that humanity begins
at a certain point. That at a certain point in the child's development,
something "clicks" in the human mind that transforms it from a state much less
cognitive (really, not cognitive at all) than any adult mamal, to a protohuman
mental state. Only at that point can the child be said to be psychologically
human. (Of course it was genetically human all along (even before
conception).) Some people suggest that the rights-based calculus can't begin
until that "click" since rights don't apply to something that can't understand
the very concept.
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: From Harry Browne
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| Chirs, there are tons of people who don't agree with or understand "rights-based calculus" but we don't exclude them from their rights. "Christopher Weeks" <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote in message news:G3v0Fx.GMC@lugnet.com... (...) begin (...) (...) (24 years ago, 11-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: From Harry Browne
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| (...) Fair enough. However, I accept the definition of death as the cessation of brain function. That is, life does not exist in a meaningful way where brain function does not exist. Therefore, it follows that life begins with the beginning of brain (...) (24 years ago, 9-Nov-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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