South Dakota is introducing a bill that will ban abortion

[GePap]

Originally posted by Elok
Well GePap, as a test, you define "personality" in terms of biological self-sufficiency of the mother, no? Sorry if this has already been asked, but does that mean that in the future, when we can invent functioning artificial wombs, a dozen-cell zygote will be a person, and illegal to abort? Do women have to race against the clock to whack their kids?

If we have artificial womb, then "choice" of women would be irrelevant, in so far as we would asusme that if they took the steps necessary to incubate a child out of the womb, then this is a wanted rpegnancy, and there isn't even the risk of death to the mother, and certainly what woman would incubate the child of incest or rape?

So your tongue in cheek question is correct-the current abortion debate would become moot for fetuses being incubated technologicaly.

[Elok]

Yes, but if the little lump of cells can be saved by extracting it from the womb and sticking it in an Econo-Uterus (TM), would women be obligated to undergo that procedure rather than abort?

[Ben Kenobi]

Okay.

I finally have a better answer for you Loinburger.

I wasn't happy with my earlier point, but I had my memory refreshed by reading a textbook of a friend that went over Substance Dualism as argued by JP Morland in a book that I read 3 years ago.

I had forgotten some of his arguments, but he refines the definition of personhood, moreso than Beckwith. I guess I never thought to combine the two since I first read both books at about the same time.

Here we go.

1. JP Morland's argument against physicality is that our body changes, yet we stay the same, even as our cells change. We are not like an automobile when you change a tire, in that we do not change when we lose an arm, and the arm is replaced by a synthetic arm.

Now, why does the person maintain absolute identity through the change? The answer is that in addition to the physical bodies, there exists a soul. Personal identity is constituted by the soul.

Going back to our point at hand about my definition of personhood, Aristotle taught that when something new emerges, it comes not from nothing, but from something. An apple does not spring from nothing, but in the apple contained in the seed.

In the general case, when a property (such as a mind) emerges from a substance, the property was in the substance already, and becomes actual when it emerges.

What this means, is that even if a substance, (person), does not exhibit a mind, the mind is already there, just in a different form.

Therefore, a definition of personhood, more refined than my earlier one, is the state of a being with the intrinsic capacity to form a mind.

A mind is an emergent property, in that with sufficient complexity, the mind emerges all at once. It does not spring from nothing, but from the complexity of the body, as the body develops, it activates the innate capacity to form a mind.

Now, in brain death, the mind has irreverseably reverted to its inert form, such that we cannot recover the mind from the body. This is why when we lose consciousness, we retain the memory that we had before, in that the mind simply stops functioning, but remains intact. If we could revive a brain dead person, they would be as someone temporarily unconscious, they retain their previous memories, but they have no memories of the intervening events.

Tacking your thought experiment, the mind would exist without either the body or the brain, but until the body and brain were reunited, the emergent property condition of the mind would not be satisfied. Therefore, I am correct to say that I am still alive if one can rejoin both the body and brain, such that they still function, but if you cannot, than I have truly died, and keeping my brain in the jar will not bring me back.

Secondly, this also explains why the zygote is a person, and why the sperm and egg are not. The sperm, and egg, are two halves, that when combined gain this intrinsic capacity to form a mind. A sperm and egg will not form a mind by themselves. Therefore, there is a link between the formation of the mind, and the genetic code, such that the genetic code, when put together, and combined with the physical engine, will develop and attain increasing complexity.

At a certain point, this complexity will manifest a mind. Personhood is not the point in which the mind becomes manifest, but when all the ingredients are there for the increasing complexity. This we see at conception, in the formation of the necessary substance.

I don't know if this helps, but the idea came to me over the last couple of hours.

[loinburger]

Two problems that I have with this form of dualism:

1. People do not maintain absolute identities through physical changes. Brain damage can cause significant changes to somebody's personality, with probably the most famous case being that of Phineas Gage.

2. If nothing can come form nothing, and if the zygote contains a soul, then wouldn't this require that the sperm and ova contain half-souls, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the fully-grown child-to-be, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the child-to-be's offspring, and so forth?

[Elok]

I'm not asserting anything about souls (I don't want to be dragged into that argument), but why does there have to be a "half-soul?" Couldn't the zygote manufacture a soul from individual molecules or lil' metaphysical tidbits or whatever, if we're talking about eternity of matter? Come to think of it, as a soul is ostensibly neither energy or matter, why does the rule apply at all?

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Elok
why does there have to be a "half-soul?"

Because of the claim that the mind is already present in a zygote (albeit in a different form). If something can come from nothing (e.g., if consciousness is an emergent property of the formation of the brain), then the claim that the zygote has a mind "in a different form" is baseless. However, if something cannot come from nothing, then the sperm/egg need (a lot of) half-souls, else the soul would be coming from nothing.

In other words, if a soul can be manufactured out of little metaphysical tidbits, then there's nothing metaphysically special about the moment of conception -- the soul could be manufactured at any point during (or even after?) the organism's development.

[Elok]

In which case there is also nothing special about any other point in life, but I see your meaning, sorta.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Elok
Yes, but if the little lump of cells can be saved by extracting it from the womb and sticking it in an Econo-Uterus (TM), would women be obligated to undergo that procedure rather than abort?

No.

[Elok]

Explain, sil vous plait?

[Kuciwalker]

2. If nothing can come form nothing, and if the zygote contains a soul, then wouldn't this require that the sperm and ova contain half-souls, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the fully-grown child-to-be, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the child-to-be's offspring, and so forth?

Nope, just because the mind came from the stuff before, doesn't mean the mind was present in the stuff before.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kucinich
Nope, just because the mind came from the stuff before, doesn't mean the mind was present in the stuff before.

That's true if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an emergent property. However, if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an intrinsic property, then you're left with sperm/ova that contain an infinite number of partial consciousnesses/souls/whatever.

[Ben Kenobi]

1. People do not maintain absolute identities through physical changes. Brain damage can cause significant changes to somebody's personality, with probably the most famous case being that of Phineas Gage.

If so, then what sets aside one type of physical change from another?

I would argue, that even after brain damage, you still have the same Phineas Gage as before, and you fall to the first critique of physicality.

2. If nothing can come form nothing, and if the zygote contains a soul, then wouldn't this require that the sperm and ova contain half-souls, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the fully-grown child-to-be, along with the half-souls of all sperm/ova that will ever be generated by the testes/ovaries of the child-to-be's offspring, and so forth?

If this were true, then we would all contain more than one soul in our bodies. But this is absurd, ergo, the soul must come afterwards.

The argument in favour of infusing the soul at conception seems to make the most sense when combined with what we know about conception, and the necessary components required for further growth and development. Significantly, among those who disagree, none place a date before conception. Ergo, it does not make sense to say that the soul infuses before conception.

[Ben Kenobi]

That's true if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an emergent property. However, if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an intrinsic property, then you're left with sperm/ova that contain an infinite number of partial consciousnesses/souls/whatever.

Consciousness is an emergent property.

The capacity to form consciousness is an intrinsic property, at least according to JP Moreland.

The book btw is Scaling the Secular City.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by loinburger
That's true if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an emergent property. However, if consciousness (or the soul or whatever) is an intrinsic property, then you're left with sperm/ova that contain an infinite number of partial consciousnesses/souls/whatever.

Consciousness is clearly not an intrinsic property. It can only be said to exist where it affects the universe (for instance, in people, it does so in that we argue about it over the internet ), and since electrons do not demonstrate consciousness, they are not. Plus, it has been proven that consciousness resides in the brain.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
If so, then what sets aside one type of physical change from another?

What do you mean? What are these different types of physical change to which you refer?

I would argue, that even after brain damage, you still have the same Phineas Gage as before, and you fall to the first critique of physicality.

What is your justification for your stance? Phineas Gage underwent a radical personality change as a result of brain damage, which argues against dualism. Yet all you've done is to say "I disagree," as if that were sufficient justification for your position.

If this were true, then we would all contain more than one soul in our bodies. But this is absurd, ergo, the soul must come afterwards.

1. How is it absurd? On what basis do you argue that this is not possible?
2. If the soul comes afterwards, then where does it come from? You said that nothing can come from nothing, and yet now you seem to claim that the soul comes from nothing.

The capacity to form consciousness is an intrinsic property, at least according to JP Moreland.

Where does this intrinsic property come from? If this property is emergent upon conception, then it isn't intrinsic. If it is intrinsic, then it exists prior to conception, and we're left with the infinite recursion of souls.


BTW, when I said that you'd never given me a straight answer to my questions, I was referring to the question of how much of your body you can part from before you cease to be "you." Your last answer was circular:

Originally posted by loinburger
How much of your body can be replaced by machinery or transplants or whatever before you cease to be "you"?

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Everything but what connects your brain to your body, and your body to your brain.