Where do we draw the line?

A thing is created in the mind; it arises when we separate reality into two parts. This cup is this thing, but not the space around it. But this boundary is artificial. If you investigate the world closely, it disappears. As well, if you stop creating boundaries in your mind, the thing also disappears. The cup is wholly an invention of your mind.

Just as a shadow cannot arise without light, a thing cannot arise without an observer. No thing exists intrinsically.

The mind doesn't 'create' anything except perception, If a tree falls in the forest, it still makes a sound if no one is around to hear it. We are not in charge here, and no matter how much we investigate the world, nothing goes away or disappears. According to your logic, without humans, there would be nothing.

I'm a believer in pro-choice. The EZF (embryo/zygote/fetus) cannot be afforded rights as it is not yet a person, but apart of the mothers body. By removing the choice of what to do with ones body, you are infringing on the freedoms of the mother. If you do not allow the EZF to develop into a conscious person, then it is unaware of any potential it may have had and does not need the empathy you all seem to be heaping upon it. Were I aborted I wouldn't be concerned about it at all, for I wouldn't have existed consciously to care.

Who here ever considers the effects of allowing the child to be born into a home where the mother did not want the child to begin with? Do you expect the level of care and love to be the same or even sufficient as opposed to a case where the mother is ready and willing to care for it? Who here opposes abortion but is lining up to pay for, care or even adopt these children?

I think the real solution here should really be increased sexual education with emphasis on proper use of birth control measures and family planning (not abstinence only). This way the issue of abortion will be less of a significant factor.

As for, I'll call them less than optimal humans (LtOH). So long as society is willing and able to shoulder the burden of caring for these people then allow them to be born and cared for. Were it not willing then perhaps you should move somewhere they are. Were the society not able then the utilitarian thing to do would be to eliminate these LtOH to free up resources and support more productive individuals and increase the overall success of the group.

The end solution would be increased research into these conditions to find cures and preventative measures against them. Thus the issue would be reduces in it's significance.

Genetic engineering for our own purposes is pretty much the future of how we'll be doing things. Thus far we've been directing evolution through breeding, which is a broad way of achieving better animals to suit us. The next step is precision engineering and design of organisms, including ourselves, to suit humanity. If an improvement means a better possibility of survival and better standard of living for someone, then it is a worthy goal to achieve and shouldn't be limited in that direction.

dig17,

Without an ear and a brain, there is no sound. Without a measuring instrument, there's not even a sound wave. A sound that does not appear is, quite simply, not a sound.

Why do you believe that you know what reality is like outside of your own perceptions? You have never, and will never, perceive the world without perceptions.

When I say that reality apart from the mind has no things, that is because things arise from discriminate perception, which is what our mind does. I am not, however, saying that reality is nothing. That is absurd, and only indicates that you don't have the subtlety to understand what I'm saying.

dig17 wrote:It's not okay to get rid of the child ever. There is no 'point' where it becomes or doesn't become alive; it's always been alive, it started out alive when the sperm fertilized the egg. From that point on it's constantly making progress, and that is the essence of life. Stopping the process at any point is killing something. It may not be technically 'homo sapien' at certain intervals, but it's GROWING into a member of our species and that's what is important.

I hate it when females say that they can do whatever they want with their body; they may be harvesting a child, but it's definitely not their body that's growing inside them. A worm inside of a snake is still a worm, not an extension of the snake's body. Women can have all the control over their body that they want; leave your child's body out of it.

What the hell kind of logic is this?

If you're going on the moral crazy train of "don't do that, you're killing a living thing." Then we can't cut down trees, they're living things, we can't wash our hands, clean our bodies or clean our homes which are filled with billions of miniscule living things that can we mass genocide everyday with a single spray of Kapow Oven Cleaner or w.e you use.

I think murder is not defined as killing a living thing. It's defined as killing a person, or an animal in some circumstances.

A person is a rational, thinking, feeling organism. It can make decisions, it can learn, it has emotions, it has biochemistry. A cell inside of a woman's body that can potentially be a person, is NOT a person. It is a cell. It cannot think. It cannot feel.
Go beyond that to fetuses, can they think? No. Would they cry if you stabbed them? Nope. Hell, before a certain point they don't even have skin. They're nothing more than a tiny, parasitic lifeform no different than the average bacteria cluster, a gel of cells constantly replicating for reasons that they'll never have the ability to comprehend or question.

The only immoral thing going on is you, and many like you, thinking that it's okay to try and dictate how a woman decides to deal with the organism inside of her.

If she doesn't abort, because let's say it suddenly became illegal, what are her next options? Keep it? Maybe she doesn't have the money or the skills to raise a child. What's left? The childcare system? Let the government raise it? Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that is no environment for a child. It's no cakewalk, to put it lightly.

A lot of fetuses that are aborted are aborted for good reason. The mother's too poor, too young, unable to look after the kid, doesn't want to put it through the hell of growing up in foster families or being raised by a mother who has no idea wtf she's doing.

[Sorry about the quote-bombing btw, but I'm typing this post as I read the thread.]

dig17 wrote:Not true; if I am not perceiving it, it still exists. If it stays on my desk when I go to sleep, it will continue to exist. That is a truth. Existence does not depend on perception, because if something did not exist, I would not be able to perceive it anyway. God is not observable, but many people, myself included, consider Him to exist anyway.

So, what you're saying is. "If I can personally perceive it -- it exists. It's not my opinion, it's fact." That's the same logic that says God is real and that there's a tiny, invisible, non-corporeal unicorn in my pocket. If a crazy person is alone, with no one around, and will for the rest of his days see a cup, pick it up, bang it against something, feel it, etc, etc, does that mean the cup exists, too? I mean, he can measure it, he perceives it alright, there's no one around to prove any differently.

dealing with it wrote:dig17,

Without an ear and a brain, there is no sound. Without a measuring instrument, there's not even a sound wave. A sound that does not appear is, quite simply, not a sound.

Why do you believe that you know what reality is like outside of your own perceptions? You have never, and will never, perceive the world without perceptions.

When I say that reality apart from the mind has no things, that is because things arise from discriminate perception, which is what our mind does. I am not, however, saying that reality is nothing. That is absurd, and only indicates that you don't have the subtlety to understand what I'm saying.

So, if a deaf person, sitting a lone in a room, with no one around for miles, claps their hands, it doesn't make a sound because no one is there to hear it? That doesn't make any sense.

For example, look at the night sky. Many of the stars you're looking at no longer exist. But we're still seeing them because of the time it takes for that light to travel to earth. There's no one around where the star is, there's just people to observe the light. We perceive the star to exist.

dealing with it wrote: A sound that does not appear is, quite simply, not a sound.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.


Besides, this entire post is moot.

The Technological Singularity is going to happen, and all of our worthless opinions won't matter. :D

Rock on, guys. Rock on.


Oh, by the way, hitler was wrong, abortion is fine, there is no god, science won't stop, war happens get over it, technology grows and grows and you can't stop it, and stop washing your hands -- YOU'RE KILLING AN INNOCENT LIFE!

Sheoul wrote:So, if a deaf person, sitting a lone in a room, with no one around for miles, claps their hands, it doesn't make a sound because no one is there to hear it? That doesn't make any sense.

If a sonar picked it up, sound could also be said to exist, but as a blip of light rather than a noise. Perception makes all of the difference.

For example, look at the night sky. Many of the stars you're looking at no longer exist. But we're still seeing them because of the time it takes for that light to travel to earth. There's no one around where the star is, there's just people to observe the light. We perceive the star to exist.

If there was no existence, there would be no perception. Therefore, if there is perception, there is existence. Things exist only insofar as they appear.

Now, what you seem to want to be able to do is determine the some objective state of the universe, and call that existence. I'm sorry, but you have no access to that. Nobody does, unless you believe omniscience is possible and someone's omniscient. Best stick to things that can be known, like the fact that you experience appearances, or the fact that the only stuff you will ever experience are appearances. Appearances are as real as it gets.

What does it mean for the star to no longer exist, but that it would no longer appear at a closer distance?

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.

So you're not even going to attempt to explain why it's wrong? You really are a lazy thinker.

you're ignorance is asounding.

All I read in that post was circular reasoning works because

If I'm so ignorant, enlighten me: whatever do you experience that isn't a perception? Please don't reply with a one-liner, because your last post was, sadly, neither informative nor accurate. You conflated modus tollens with circularity.

It looks like this thread is getting rather off-topic... but I'm going to go ahead and add fuel to the fire, because the discussion looks interesting.

So dealing with it, forgive me if I misunderstand your position, but you seem to be saying that without the presence of conscious minds to perceive reality, reality wouldn't exist, and/or there is no external reality, only the reality constructed by our minds. I disagree; I think that the perceptions created by our minds correspond to a reality external to and independent of our thoughts. I'll explain my reasoning and you can let me know what you think.

The most persuasive supporting piece of evidence is that we know our minds are products of our brains, which are shaped by billions of years of survival on Earth. The fact that our minds are evolved suggests that they must have some utility. I have no doubt that, when I look at a fire, I am not seeing what the fire 'really' looks like. Obviously the colour, shape, texture, as well as other sensations like heat and so on are constructions of my brain made from data gathered from my sensory receptors. If I had the eye or brain of a fish/housefly/snail, then I would perceive fire/stars/a cliff/a tiger in a very different way. But although our perceptions differ in the details, the act of perceiving a fire must correspond in some way, however imperfect and distorted, with the actual existence of a phenomenon having the properties of 'a fire' in external reality. If that were not the case, it would be almost impossible for natural selection to favour my kind of brain: a kind of brain that randomly hallucinated sensations with no connection to an external environment whatsoever gives so survival advantage, and is in fact a distinct disadvantage.

Now you may have spotted the glaring flaw in my reasoning, which is this: my belief that our perceptions correspond to some external reality is rooted in evolutionary explanations of the human mind and senses. But how do we know that evolutionary explanations are sound? Based on the evidence, gathered and analysed by... our mind and senses. So now I have made a circular argument. Our mind and senses must be reliable because evolution says so, and evolution must be sound because our mind and senses say so.

I cannot think of a way to break out of this circular argument, and I think I will be forced to consign it to the bin of 'interesting unprovable philosophical chestnuts', along with the one about all of existence being a computer simulation (I wish I had the cheat codes).

The fact is that although the reliability of our senses cannot be proven in the rigorous philosophical sense (and to some philosophers, absolutely nothing can be proven, a point of view that I'm sure you sympathise with), it is part of the fundamental assumptions that we all have to make in order to participate in the world as fully functioning beings. I am quite happy to agree with you that none of our perceptions can be proven to correspond to an external reality in theory, but in practical contexts, especially when considering something like a moral issue, or how we should behave as a society, or whether women should be allowed to abort their foetuses (I believe this thread originally had something to do with that...), then we need to put the philosophical navel-gazing in its proper perspective, regardless of how intellectually stimulating it is, and think about the matters at hand within the bounds of everyday human experience, which includes the assumption that there is a real universe that exists regardless of whether it contains beings capable of perceiving it.

Resurgam wrote:So dealing with it, forgive me if I misunderstand your position, but you seem to be saying that without the presence of conscious minds to perceive reality, reality wouldn't exist, and/or there is no external reality, only the reality constructed by our minds.

I find it abundantly clear -- even self-evident -- that reality exists. Reality is the definition of existence, even; and, because I have experiences, I know that it is not nothing whatsoever. The question is, what besides reality exists in-itself, intrinsically, necessarily?

What certainly don't exist are things. That's what started this tangent. Reality is fundamentally non-dual. There is no non-reality to contrast reality it, nor even a nothingness. Without the activity of a consciousness, reality is not divided up in any way, least of all into discrete things, like cups and tables and computers. Cups don't even exist for dogs, let alone reality: you'd have to criminally anthropomorphize reality for cups to have intrinsic existence. Quite simply, the only "thing" that exists intrinsically is reality, but that's not a thing because it's not finite.

Trying to figure out what "external reality" consists of is an exercise in futility. I can be certain of only two things about it: one, I can never experience it, and two, it is capable of causing my mind to appear. I do agree that the only access to reality we have is our mental constructs.

I think that the perceptions created by our minds correspond to a reality external to and independent of our thoughts.

This is essentially an act of faith -- so much so, in fact, that I see no reason to separate reality into internal and external parts. What we perceive is real. Our appearances are really appearances; our inner mind is as much the outside as anything else.

But although our perceptions differ in the details, the act of perceiving a fire must correspond in some way, however imperfect and distorted, with the actual existence of a phenomenon having the properties of 'a fire' in external reality.

What's the real appearance? Is it a concrete thing called fire, or is it the movement of particles? Is its heat a reality or an appearance? Is there are difference?

I don't think it makes sense to speak of 'a fire' unless you are referring to the way it appears to you. It is a thing, and as such, has no inherent existence. It is not intrinsic to reality, only an accident of the way you discriminate about your perceptions. I think a fire is a good example of how any given thing doesn't exist, simply because of how difficult it is to divide the edge of the fire from the edge of the smoke. One thing or two things? That's what discrimination does: turns one into two.

I cannot think of a way to break out of this circular argument, and I think I will be forced to consign it to the bin of 'interesting unprovable philosophical chestnuts', along with the one about all of existence being a computer simulation (I wish I had the cheat codes).

In this case, I see the belief in a reality full of things-in-themselves to be the fanciful option. Belief in a knowable "external reality" beyond discriminating consciousness is an unproveable and unfalsifiable act of faith. Realizing that the best you can ever have is your finite, limited perceptions -- that even at our best, we are not much better than a hallucinating maniac -- is not only an essential piece of honesty, but a great leveller that expunges delusions.

Our senses are notoriously unreliable. Eyewitness testimony is among the worst kind of evidence. I think, contrary to your opinion, realizing that we are highly fallible beings is important (if not to society at large, then to human flourishing). We survive within a narrow band of possible experiences, barely able to sense a few tiny fragments of existence. Doubt, even radical Cartesian doubt, is a prize worth more than the simple assumption that the world is really as you see it. But, then again, I value critical thought more than I value some immensely practical and utilitarian greater good. One can be abused far more than the other.

Isn't the answer to this problem to looks at objects from varying sources to produce the "most true" description of existence? In the real world the 95% solution works.

Lukisod wrote:Isn't the answer to this problem to looks at objects from varying sources to produce the "most true" description of existence?

I'm not convinced that "most true" and "most useful" are synonyms; you seem to have described the latter.

In light of that, an answer could be to drop truth altogether, create your own yardstick, and use models that promise to be effective relative to that. Or you can retire to a monastery and meditate on truth until you no longer make distinctions. What you decide is more ethical is what you should do.

I find myself mostly agreeing with dealing with it. There is, in my opinion, no real way to define, measure, etc., "morals" or anything that is really related to morals. For all people are created equally, yet we are all raised differently. No matter what, everybody is going to have different morals. Who is anyone to say what morals are right, and what are wrong? (Of course, this is opinion [what isn't?], so I could be far off the point. Then again, maybe I'm not...who knows?) Then again, I am finding, myself, that most, if not all, of these posts hold at least some form of the "truth," whatever that may be. Because, like "morals," who is to say what is really "true" or not? Some say that love at first sight is true, while others may scoff and smirk in their own personal views. For isn't that what everything really is? A view, a perception, what we make of it?

Somehow this thread jumped from moral obligations regarding technology and what is right and what is wrong, to whether abortion is right or wrong, to whether the reality we perceive actually exists. I am not entirely sure how all of that jumping around started, but I will give my opinion on all three 'topics'.

Technology: Is it right to choose whether to have a boy or girl? If done carefully, then I think yes, especially if you are trying to create a better life for the child. If done through artificial implantation after a doctor determines the child would be a boy, then I think that is okay. But if you try 'naturally' and then find out that you have a girl and abort the baby, then I believe that is wrong.

As for eugenics, it looks great on paper but in practice is not such a good idea. I mean, who doesn't want to improve our species, at least in theory? But dictating who lives or dies or gets to reproduce is a very slipper slope. How can you place a price on a human life? Is it their productivity? Their quality of life? Their wisdom and knowledge? Their age? In order to properly 'improve' our species, you would have to cease looking at people as people and start treating them like emotionless robots. But most people don't like to be treated that way.

So back to original question: where do we draw the line? My answer: we crossed that line a long time ago. Technology and computers are well on their way to replacing homo sapiens as the dominant 'life form' on this planet (since computers aren't alive in the organic sense). They are getting smarter, faster, and controlling more and more aspects of our lives. As far as I'm concerned, we're already doomed and it's only a matter of time.

Abortion: it is wrong. The only time it should ever be considered is when the mother's life is in danger. I believe this because a fetus will be a fully functioning human being, and killing it before birth is tantamount to killing the person it will be. At conception, a fetus has all of the genetic material necessary to become an adult independent of the mother. The fetus has entirely DNA from the mother, thus making a separate being. Because of this, the argument 'a woman has the right to choose what happens to her body' becomes invalid because she is not dealing with just her own body, but also somebody else's. Just because it doesn't feel pain or think for itself is not an excuse, and niether is 'well it won't care because it's been aborted' or 'if I'd been aborted then I wouldn't be around to care whether I was aborted or not'. That is a logical fallacy and really doesn't make any sense if you think about it.

For you people who point out all the reasons a mother might not want/be able to care for a child, adoption is a totally viable alternative. There are many governmental agencies in place to ensure the child goes to a good home, and there are thousands of good people who adopt. Three of my cousins are adopted, and my girlfriend spend several years in the foster system. The foster system in the US works, and it is not the hellhole that most people seem to think it is. What we think of as an orphanage hasn't even existed in the US since the 20s. You can thank Hollywood for giving foster homes a bad name.

Reality: everything we perceive as being real, is actually real. If nobody was there to perceive it, it would still be there. It's the old 'if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?' Science tells me that yes, it must make a sound because that is what falling trees do, regardless of whether or not anybody is there to hear it. Sound is simply vibrations in the air, and the vibrations will exist without me being there to notice them.

Now, science also tells me that what I perceive as being real is simply electrical and chemical processes in my brain. Therefore, I can never be certain whether anything actually exists at all. For all I know my brain is sitting in some laboratory and my consciousness is in some version of the Matrix or something. But if that were true, then it is amazingly realistic and it's a moot point. This is my reality, this is what I perceive, this is what I know.

Why does something need us to perceive it for it to exist? Perceiving verifies it's existence, but the act of perception does not create it's existence. The sun and earth and moon and oceans existed long before you perceived them, and will continue to exist long after you are gone.

dig17 wrote:It's not okay to get rid of the child ever. There is no 'point' where it becomes or doesn't become alive; it's always been alive, it started out alive when the sperm fertilized the egg. From that point on it's constantly making progress, and that is the essence of life. Stopping the process at any point is killing something. It may not be technically 'homo sapien' at certain intervals, but it's GROWING into a member of our species and that's what is important.

I hate it when females say that they can do whatever they want with their body; they may be harvesting a child, but it's definitely not their body that's growing inside them. A worm inside of a snake is still a worm, not an extension of the snake's body. Women can have all the control over their body that they want; leave your child's body out of it.

This statement is a bit to emotional for a logical debate. There are no examples are theories to support your argument just rhetoric. You stated that the sperm started out alive when it fertilized the egg. What makes it alive? Is it the fact that it is in the developing process. The sperm goes through a development process even before it is released from its host. Is it a living entity at that point. If that is the case then you should feel the same way about using a condom as you do for abortion.

I do not believe abortion is wrong. No matter what point you decide where life begins you are essentially preventing life from taking place. Birth control, condoms, vasectomies, and other technological advancements prevent life from taking place. Are they necessarily wrong. That's all a matter of perception. Also while there are many terrific parents that adopt children there are far more parentless children out there the childless parents. The foster care system in the U.S. is not the hellhole everyone thinks it is but it is not far off. There are too many kids for so few workers to keep track and take care of them all. For every good parent out there that wants to give a child a good home there are three that just do it for selfish or financial reasons.

I agree with you to a certain point about the statements that females can do whatever they want with their body. If a woman is with child she should not be allowed to make the sole decisions for that child. It took two parties to create life so it should take two parties if she decides to end it. If a woman decides too gives birth to a child she has numerous legal avenues to force her biological father to support that child. If a woman decides to have an abortion that father does not have any legal avenues to help save that child. I believe in these cases it should be all or nothing.

Now for the actual topic. I do not believe it is playing God to strive for new avenues within technology no matter where they lead. People have been deciding over life and death before the notion of technology was every created. In the past parents killed their children if they did not have the child they desired. Numerous children were killed because of physical deformities. Some where even killed because the parents wanted a different gender. For the times these were accepted practices. The advancements in technology allow us to learn more about ourselves and that knowlege changes us as a society.