HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism)
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:55:02 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to jk@panix.com]
 
>>It [abortion] can't be [wrong] because one is preventing or
>>destroying a potential human for the same reasons -- the IUD prevents
>>the fertilized ovum from implanting and therefore must have caused far
>>more potential humans not to have developed than abortion.
 
>My impression is that most people who regard abortion as wrong from
>conception have major problems with the IUD.
 
>As I understand it, the objection such people have is not an objection
>to destroying potential life.  Rather, the idea is that once the ovum is
>fertilized a particular human life has come into being and it is wrong
>to destroy that particular actual life, at least without a very good
>justification.  My life, one might say, is the same particular human
 
You deleted the stuff about how I couldn't see any practical difference
between removing the ovum before and after fertilization.  I still
don't.  The sperm and ovum were just as much alive before fertilization.
The only difference is that the ovum now has some new chromosomes.  I
don't see anything magically different about that.  Can you explain why
this difference is perceived to be so important (without resorting to
religious dogma?
 
>>Unfortunately, since the soul is a supernatural concept, there is
>>nothing which natural science can tell us about it, much less prove
>>its existence.
 
>If someone regarded the taking of a particular human life as the feature
>that made abortion bad, but identified human life with human sentience,
>then by "soul" he might simply mean sentient human life, say that
>abortion becomes bad when the child is "ensouled", and find natural
>science relevant to determining when that is.
 
I have no objections if you want to redefine "soul" that way, but the
standard definition is "the immortal part of man, separate from the
physical body", which implies that is is strictly supernatural.  Perhaps
it would be better just to say "sentient" if that is what you mean.

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Michael Feld)
Subject: Re: Grounding morals
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 16:07:33 GMT

Hey, look, no one appreciates a joke more than I do (except maybe for
the major), but even zealotry is no excuse for just plain getting your
facts wrong:

Kant thought that moral obligations were absolute and objective; he
thought that they were real.

Query: what has led SG to think otherwise?
-- 
Michael Feld                  | E-mail: <feld@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Dept. of Philosophy           | FAX: (204) 261-0021
University of Manitoba        | Voice: (204) 474-9136
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2M8, Canada
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Date: 23 Jan 93 10:44:57 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to roholdr@ccu.umanitoba.ca]
 
>>>I have been struggling with these questions lately.  I see no
>>>qualitative distinction between the consciousness of man and other
>>>higher mammals, only a quantitative one.
 
>By "qualitative" he must mean 'quality of being'.  As to "quantitative",
>I'm a little less clear.  Perhaps he means to say that as humans we may
>have superior cognitive ability, but that there's more to existance than
>reasoning.  But isn't most of what we are reason?  How much of our
>action is guided by instinct alone?  By reason alone?
 
I meant to say that the difference in consciousness between humans and
higher mammals is a matter of amount instead of a difference in kind.
 
>If the pig is dead, and you enjoy pork is it not okay or even morally
>correct to satisfy your hunger by eating it?
 
If it isn't OK to kill the pig, it isn't to eat it either, even it you
didn't kill it, because you are creating a demand for pork.
 
>Why not?  We could say that life was "sacrosanct" and that all killing
>is wrong.  Shortly thereafter we might all starve to death,
 
Perhaps it is right to say that all killing is wrong, but at the same
time wrong for an animal to starve itself to death, and necessary that
there to be predators or the eaten animals will outgrow their food
supply and starve to death.  The ultimate morality of being carnivorous
then depends on the contributions of each of these considerations.
Thus, it can be moral for the lion to eat the gazelle because he is
ecologically important as a predator and an obligatory carnivore,
whereas humans are neither (our raising of animals for food is not
beneficial to the environment).

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: yale@brahms.udel.edu (Christopher Rob Robe)
Subject: Re: Intelligent?
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 20:44:30 GMT


>In article <1jp731INNn9u@bigboote.WPI.EDU> rosemary@joseph.WPI.EDU (Rosemary Irene Braun) writes:
>>Hello fellow thinkers!
>>
>>Two friends and I recently got into a discussion concerning the definition
>>of intelligence... I was just wondering what you thought, because there seems 
>>to be a lot of ambiguity in the concept of intelligence. 

___________________________________________________________________________

That is one good question.  One quote I remember quite clearly which
pertains to this very question is, "There is a fine line between clever
and stupid."  

I don't think intelligence has to really deal with what you think about,
but instead how you think about it.  I believe intelligence can be
measured by the way one logically reasons and how ones beliefs adhere to
actual reality.  Obviously we all have warped senses of reality, but
what we believe must at least seem to logically adhere to reality even
though it might truly not.  This is just a brief notion.



 Chris Robe'












Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism)
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 14:07:18 GMT

nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye) writes:
 
[I had written:]

>>As I understand it, the objection such people have is not an objection
>>to destroying potential life.  Rather, the idea is that once the ovum is
>>fertilized a particular human life has come into being and it is wrong
>>to destroy that particular actual life, at least without a very good
>>justification.
 
>You deleted the stuff about how I couldn't see any practical difference
>between removing the ovum before and after fertilization.  I still
>don't.

I thought you were comparing removal before and after implantation
(hence your IUD discussion).

>The sperm and ovum were just as much alive before fertilization. The
>only difference is that the ovum now has some new chromosomes.  I don't
>see anything magically different about that.

The difference is that neither the sperm nor the unfertilized ovum can
be understood as the bearer of a particular actual human life, while
the fertilized ovum can.

It's possible for me to identify myself with what I was when I was a
2-year-old, when I was a newborn, when I was a 9 or 6 month foetus, and
so on all the way back to conception, because most of my fundamental
characteristics and propensities were fixed then and my subsequent
development can be understood as a process of unfolding and further
determining what was already there.

It's much more difficult for me to identify myself with the
unfertilized egg that after fertilization became me because the
unfertilized egg could have developed normally into a man or a woman, a
Eurasian, white or mulatto, a brilliant mathematician or a congenital
idiot, and so on.  In addition, it seems that the unfertilized egg was
no more me than the sperm that eventually fertilized it, and until
conception there was no particular reason to tie the two together.
 
>>If someone regarded the taking of a particular human life as the feature
>>that made abortion bad, but identified human life with human sentience,
>>then by "soul" he might simply mean sentient human life, say that
>>abortion becomes bad when the child is "ensouled", and find natural
>>science relevant to determining when that is.
> 
>I have no objections if you want to redefine "soul" that way, but the
>standard definition is "the immortal part of man, separate from the
>physical body", which implies that is is strictly supernatural.

In your original post it seemed as though you were trying to describe
the possible arguments against abortion and why you thought they didn't
work.  My intention was simply to restate the argument in a way that
didn't require anything supernatural (which seemed to be your objection
to to arguments tying the impermissibility of abortion to sentience).
-- 
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
"Alles Erworbne bedroht die Maschine, solange
sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein."  (Rilke)
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Date: 24 Jan 93 23:11:40 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to cash@convex.com]
 
>>>Why should we think that an argument is _required_ to prohibit murder,
>>>or that a criterion must be found that confers a right to live?  Where
>>>did we get the idea that philosophy ought to give us _reasons_ for the
>>>simplest things?
 
>>I agree that morals are relative.
 
>But I didn't say that. I just expressed doubt that philosophy can
>provide (or ought to provide) a foundation for morals. Why would you
>think that this means "morals are relative"?
 
OK.  I had a little trouble understanding you the first time, but I
assumed you were following the postmodern anti-foundationalism line (of
Rorty, et al) from your above statement.  If not, perhaps you can reveal
your hidden agenda and tell me what then is the foundation for your
absolute morals.
 
>>Murder is wrong because we all (or most of us, at least) agree that it
>>is wrong.
 
>What kind of statement is this? "Murder is wrong"? At the very least,
>it's a peculiar thing to say. Indeed, this is a highly redundant--even
>tautologically empty statement, and I'm not at all sure of what to say
>about it. Perhaps you would be less inclined to say puzzling things
>about moral matters if you didn't consider such odd statements to be
>paradigms of moral judgment.
 
Does anyone else see this flame as a little bizarre?  Who is this guy?
 
[story about policeman shooting prisoner deleted]
 
>Now, assuming that the facts are as presented, are you going to ask if
>shooting down a helpless prisoner is wrong?
 
It is wrong because all reasonable people agree that it is wrong, not
because there exists any a priori moral axiom that says it is wrong.
 
>Somehow, I think the temptation to talk this way would not exist --
>unlike the case where you sit at your desk and mutter to yourself,
>"murder is wrong".
 
Why this ad hominem attack?  Has something I've written offended you
that much?  Do you hate atheists?  Vegetarians?  Or is this just your
usual style?
 
>Still, philosophers say the damndest things, so I wouldn't be surprised
>if one could be found who would say shooting a prisoner under such
>circumstances is only reprehensible "by convention".
 
You may be surprised to learn that many, perhaps most philosophers today
take the relativist side on this question.
 
>>My problem is that if I start from the premises that it is immoral to
>>kill a human, even a mentally retarded one, and that there is no
>>abrupt discontinuity between the consciousness of humans and higher
>>mammals (as supported by primate research), then I can't see a way to
>>continue to be a carnivore without being morally inconsistent.
 
>What has your premise that "it is immoral to kill a human" got to do
>with "consciousness", anyway?
 
Uh, nothing.  Look again.  Those are independant premises.
 
So come on, tell us.  What's really eating you about my post?

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: roholdr@ccu.umanitoba.ca (R Ross Holder Jr)
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 18:09:53 GMT

In <1993Jan26.165552.3350@cnsvax.uwec.edu> nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye) writes:

>>Ommm - why is it morally superior to kill a plant than to kill an
>>animal?
> 
>Because the animal is sentient

Doesn't that depend on the animal?  When we consider what is sentient and what
isn't, some have suggested that the criteria for sentience are:

	- intelligence
	- self-awareness
	- consciousness

Does every animal posess these?  If not, and if the pleasure/pain principle
is our fundmantal moral principle, can animals experience pain as unhappiness?
If not, and physical pain is all a given animal can experience (at that
instinctively as we may be compelled to draw our hand away from a hot stove
element), can it somehow be argued that killing these non-sentient entities
is more wrong than chopping down a tree?

Sentience, for me, is the determining factor in whether or not it is ethical
to digest 'it' as sustenance.  Vegetation isn't sentient, therefore it is
ethical to eat salad.  I don't perceive snails as sentient, therefore, it is
is quite alright for me to ingest escargots.  Cows may have been sentient
once, but now been changed into cow-machines that barely posess sufficient
intellect to distinguish day from night.  Some dogs have demonstrated
sentient qualities, but this isn't necessarily sentience.  (However, enough
doubt remains for me to feel eating dogmeat is unethical.)  And 'higher'
mammals such as dolphins, wales, a variety of apes have conclusively
demonstratd stentience; therefore killing any member of these species I
would equate with murder.

Sentience is an order of degree it seems.  That being the case, it follows
that some animals may lack the development so as to make it no more wrong to
eat them than a plant.

-- 
    _/_/_/   _/  _/ _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
   _/    _/ _/  _/ _/ R. Ross Holder, Jr.        _/     The        _/
  _/_/_/   _/_/_/ _/ roholdr@ccu.umanitoba.ca   _/ University of  _/
 _/    _/ _/  _/ _/ Department of Philosophy   _/     Manitoba   _/
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Date: 21 Jan 93 18:48:59 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to cash@convex.com]
 
>Why should we think that an argument is _required_ to prohibit murder,
>or that a criterion must be found that confers a right to live?  Where
>did we get the idea that philosophy ought to give us _reasons_ for the
>simplest things?
 
I agree that morals are relative.  Murder is wrong because we all (or
most of us, at least) agree that it is wrong.  My problem is that if I
start from the premises that it is immoral to kill a human, even a
mentally retarded one, and that there is no abrupt discontinuity between
the consciousness of humans and higher mammals (as supported by primate
research), then I can't see a way to continue to be a carnivore without
being morally inconsistent.  Alternatively, I could try to convince
myself that there is nothing wrong with killing and eating mentally
retarded humans, although as a practical matter I wouldn't try it
because it is illegal, not to mention revolting.

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,comp.ai.philosophy
From: christo@psych.toronto.edu (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: supervenience refs please
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 18:18:09 GMT

In article <tim.727605727@giaeb> tim@giaeb.cc.monash.edu.au (Tim Roberts) writes:
>Can anyone supply me with any references to the subject of supervenience,
>especially in relation to consciousness ?
>
>Many thanks to anyone who replies....
>
Supervenience begins with Moore, in _Principia Ethica_, I believe.
It was adopted by philosophical psychology in the 1970s, to describe
the relation between mind and brain under token identity theory.
It is dealt with extensively in Fodor's book, _Psychosemantics_.
-- 
Christopher D. Green                christo@psych.toronto.edu
Psychology Department               cgreen@lake.scar.utoronto.ca
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb)
Subject: Re: Abortion (was Vegetarianism)
Organization: Institute for the Human Sciences
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 20:44:08 GMT

In <1993Jan24.140528.3259@cnsvax.uwec.edu> nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye) writes:

>It [abortion] can't be [wrong] because one is preventing or
>destroying a potential human for the same reasons -- the IUD prevents
>the fertilized ovum from implanting and therefore must have caused far
>more potential humans not to have developed than abortion.

My impression is that most people who regard abortion as wrong from
conception have major problems with the IUD.

As I understand it, the objection such people have is not an objection
to destroying potential life.  Rather, the idea is that once the ovum is
fertilized a particular human life has come into being and it is wrong
to destroy that particular actual life, at least without a very good
justification.  My life, one might say, is the same particular human
life that I had when I was two, and still earlier in my mother's womb
all the way back to conception.  So if there's something wrong about
murder that transcends utilitarian concerns, one might believe that the
wrongness has to do with the fundamental wrongness of destroying a
particular human life as such.

>Unfortunately, since the soul is a supernatural concept, there is
>nothing which natural science can tell us about it, much less prove its
>existence.

If someone regarded the taking of a particular human life as the feature
that made abortion bad, but identified human life with human sentience,
then by "soul" he might simply mean sentient human life, say that
abortion becomes bad when the child is "ensouled", and find natural
science relevant to determining when that is.
-- 
Jim Kalb (jk@panix.com)
"Alles Erworbne bedroht die Maschine, solange
sie sich erdreistet, im Geist, statt im Gehorchen, zu sein."  (Rilke)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: ag@sics.se (Anders G|ransson)
Subject: Re: Grounding morals
Organization: GRAMMA
	<1993Jan26.032035.13300@news.eng.convex.com>
	<C1G6Ct.HJ8@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 12:33:04 GMT

In article <C1G6Ct.HJ8@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> jwales@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Jimmy -Jimbo- Wales) writes:



(text, from Peter C. and 'Jimbo' omitted)


   Not directly, not immediately, not individually, of course.  But
   intellectual arguments play a strong role in shaping culture, law,
   etc.   If there is a failure among intellectuals (philosophers) in
   defending (for example) the fundamental value of life, then a direct
   result may be: Nazi gas chambers.  We've seen it happen.


I don't know if it is in any way related to this issue but I
once read a serie of interesting comments on this matter by
Heisenberg (who lived in Germany during the second world war). 
He suggested that intellectual arguments was part of the problem
and that morality must be based in something beyond rational
arguments. One metaphor he used was that we had built a boat in
a strong structure of steel, so strong that the compass only
responded to the steel surrounding it. 

Now, I hope I haven't 'put my foot in my mouth' or whatever way
the English proverb has it.

best regards Anders

 


--


If you see Saint Annie, please tell her - Thanks a lot.
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Date: 24 Jan 93 23:12:36 -0600
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to cash@convex.com]
 
>>Thus, it can be moral for the lion to eat the gazelle because he is
>>ecologically important as a predator and an obligatory carnivore,
>>whereas humans are neither (our raising of animals for food is not
>>beneficial to the environment).
 
>Why is that? Why are our activities somehow hostile to "the
>environment", while the activities of the lion are not?
 
This is a matter of record.  I'm astonished that you would even attempt
to make a case against it (although after that last post, perhaps I
shouldn't be).  Whenever you bring a domestic animal to be raised for
food into a pristine environment, you change it, usually drastically.
For example, much of the Amazon rain forest is being burned off to grow
beef.  If you take all the lions *out* of their environment, you change
it, again drastically, as the former prey now multiply out of control
and start to outgraze their food supply, sometimes to the point of
permanently altering the flora, then begin to die in large numbers from
starvation and disease.  I'm not saying that it is impossible to raise a
herd of some domesticated animal without noticably damaging the
ecosystem (notice that I said "is not beneficial", not "is detrimental")
but I can't think of any ecologic benefit.

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
From: nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu (David Nye)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Date: 26 Jan 93 22:55:51 GMT
Organization: University of Wisconsin Eau Claire

[reply to stcmille@panix.com]
 
>Ommm - why is it morally superior to kill a plant than to kill an
>animal?
 
Because the animal is sentient
 
>Selfish DNA makes it quite clear that often the "moral" thing to do is
>to kill one's non-relatives.
 
Instinctual behavior is not necessarily moral behavior
 
>Or if increase is not the arbiter of morality, hell, what is?
 
You have confused "moral" with "pragmatic"
 
>I have problems believing the argument that it is immoral to kill
>animals.
 
Looks more like problems understanding the argument to me.

David Nye
nyeda@cnsvax.uwec.edu
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: stcmille@panix.com (Steve Miller)
Subject: Re: Vegitarianism
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 21:36:45 GMT

Ommm - why is it morally superior to kill a plant than to kill an
animal?

Selfish DNA makes it quite clear that often the "moral" thing to do is
to kill one's non-relatives.  Or if increase is not the arbiter of
morality, hell, what is?

I have problems believing the argument that it is immoral to kill
animals.
-- 

__________________________________________________________
Steve Miller				stcmille@panix.com
		A Famous Rock Star!
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc
From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: Intelligent vegetables
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 17:38:09 GMT

If a salad asked for more salt do i have a right to use pepper?
________________________________________________________________________________
	"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and cer-
tainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."
                                                              AYN RAND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Grossman <PMSC13SG@UMASSD.EDU>
================================================================================
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc