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Can one define human life purely through empirical methods?

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Can one define human life purely through empirical methods?
Yes
  
57% [ 4 ]
No
  
29% [ 2 ]
ABSTAINING NOT ALLOWED IN THE SYMPOSIUM!
  
14% [ 1 ]
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Axordil
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Posted: Sun 06 Feb , 2005 6:52 pm
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Jnyusa wrote:
There's a difference between being human by definition and having the rights accorded to a human.
Jn
But is there? Is not the definition the thing on which the rights are presupposed? If A, then B: if human, then has rights?

A side note--many laws, when dealing with semantically tricky issues, include a beginning section which states something to the effect of: For the purposes of this Act, X shall be defined as Y" and yet the definition of the beings to whom all these laws applied is taken for granted, treated axiomatically, whether it should be or not. Curious.

It is true that science can supply only the factual descriptors of a being's state: genetics, viability, functionality. But must the process of deciding which of these will comprise the definition of "living human being" be extraempirical, or can a logical method be formed that would do the trick?

Certainly a few logical universals make sense, in terms of narrowing the discussion, but narrowing is not defining. Shakespeare WAS human, for example, but is long dead, his body disorganized at the molecular level. So an entire class of potential humans can be ruled out, but the converse is not true--having a body is required, but not sufficient. This can be applied for a number of conditions, "boxing in" as it were the definition, but never absolutely and precisely. The ultimate question, I think, becomes one of which of two alternatives this negative approach to definition yields:

One: a situation in which an example can be found to which no further boxing can apply--an "I don't know" answer to the "is this human life"

or

Two: a situation in which there is a defining line irresolvable by further reductive binaries--a Zeno's paradox-type situation in which there is always a yes/no answer to "is this human life" but without Cartesian certainty as to whether any other future answers will end up on one side or the other of the question.

I think the problem is that we have here a discrete function that we want to be continuous, but which cannot be made so through logical means. We have a large supply of data points representing potential human lives, and can make logically based decisions as to whether or not any given one of them is human, but as the supply is not infinite, we cannot derive therefrom a boundary between the classes, and being human, :D we want a solid boundary, a continuous line.

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Axordil
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Posted: Sun 06 Feb , 2005 7:40 pm
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Din--
Human beings have special rights because we say we do. However, we could change our minds if it suited our purposes. As we seem to be the only beings around with whom we can reliably communicate who care about such things, it falls to us to argue amongst ourselves over it. :D

It is interesting too that although we shudder at the idea of declaring someone "partially human" we have no problem with a broad variety of application of the rights that go along with being human, even in the "freest" of free societies. A 21 year old has substantially more privileges, and a few more rights, than a 3 year old. An 85 year old with Alzheimers has more rights than an 8 year old with the exact same mental capacity.

Are some humans more human than others? Is it not only a discrete function that best describes our condition, but one with multiple values?

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Sun 06 Feb , 2005 8:47 pm
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Is not the definition the thing on which the rights are presupposed? If A, then B: if human, then has rights?

To make that sentence follow from what I said, I would like to make one modification: Is not the scientific definition the thing ...

And then I would say that the answer is 'no.' All human societies have at some time practiced abortion and infanticide. Yet I do not think any of them would argue that the 'victim' is not human. Instead they would say it is human but does not yet matter; or, in the case of typical infanticidal cultures, it is human but has to be sacrificed so that other humans can survive .... which is not different from the way we view people on death row.

This is a normative criterion and does not flow from scientific definitions.

can a logical method be formed

yes, but not a syllogism I think because, again, there is no positivist criterion that can be used as the second premise. The second premise is always: Does it matter? Do we want it to matter? The syllogism may hold but the validity of the premise will always be questionable.

I think the problem is that we have here a discrete function that we want to be continuous, but which cannot be made so through logical means.

I'm probably misunderstanding you here, or looking at it upside down or something, but my first reaction was to say the opposite ... reality is a continuum and we are trying to chop off bits and fit it in a box. Non-living -- living is a continuum, human ancestor--modern human--future human is a continuum, as is the development from zygote to adult. But we want to place discrete boundaries around these continuua ... we want to draw a line where homo sapiens sapiens begins and say that is a qualitative difference when it really is not. We want to draw a line at the first trimester of pregnancy but that line, too, is artificial. We create a social reality that abstracts the being from its natural continuum ... skin color, for example, is a continuum that we try to divide into discrete races and the only purpose behind that is social. It has no grounding biological fact.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Mon 07 Feb , 2005 3:56 pm
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I agree that the concept of living-non-living is a continuum, but the examples one can come up with are not. We can't look at something and say it's 45% living, 55% non-living.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Mon 07 Feb , 2005 6:39 pm
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No, that's true.

The continuum enters in a different way, with things that are ambiguous, like viruses. When a bacterium is moving about and reproducing and such, it's 100% alive; when it's fossilized it's 100% dead and will never live again. But what's a virus with its toggle-switch on 'off'? It's something in between the usual definitions of alive and dead; it doesn't fit cleanly into either category.

The point simply being that even a distinction like this, which seems so clear-cut, is really arbitrary - a characteristic of our taxonomy but not necessarily of the underlying phenomenon.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Mon 07 Feb , 2005 9:11 pm
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Absolutely. The problem lies not with the answer, but with our understanding of the question; to wit, taxonomy is inherently arbitrary, and reality is inherently not. One can thus always come up with a definition of life, or human life, or specization, et al, that is logically consistent, but which cannot promise to describe all possible permutations. OR one can come up with a method of describing all possible permutations, but then it couldn't promise to be logically consistent.

The first way is science, the second religion.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 08 Feb , 2005 4:47 am
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I agree with you that these are two separate questions, or two separate approaches, but I don't agree that you necessarily need religion for either of them. This is not to say that religion is not necessary, but I don't think it is necessary to answer materialistic questions like the one in the poll.

Science is not logic alone, it is also observation, and testing, and proposing the questions to be asked even if they can't be answered yet. What science cannot deal with, really, is anything that cannot be accessed through our senses. (I would argue that logic and math are not so much faculties independent of the senses as modes of processing sensory information.)

Acquinas tried to apply logic to religion, and he really ran afoul of the rules because there's no way (yet) of verifying a conclusion that has to do with things inaccessible to the senses. So I would put all the methods available to science, including logic and math, in one camp, so to speak, and say that they are fundamentally reductionist and materialistic; and put the methods available to religion, including prayer and meditation and visions and inspiration and such in another camp, and say that they are fundamentally inductive and unfalsifiable, but both are used to inform the process of human judgment.

I can't use science to prove or disprove that the religious dimension exists, I can only observe that people use it, and use it thoroughly for answering certain kinds of questions.

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 08 Feb , 2005 4:19 pm
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I don't think religion is needed to define human life either--but that's because I'm willing to live with a definition that may shift as more evidence is collected. This is the limitation of the empirical, materialist approach. What was considered human life a century ago and what is now are not the same, scientifically speaking.

I think those who want a definition that is more stable need something else--the second method I describe, one which I call religion because it is not science, and I view the two (as it seems you do) as not merely exclusive but complementary in terms of paths to understanding.

My original question was thus hopelessly flawed, of course. :mrgreen: But otherwise it wouldn't be nearly so good a jumping off point.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 08 Feb , 2005 9:19 pm
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Then we agree and just express it in different terms. (I love it when that happens.)

Btw, is the codpiece in your pic made out of a pillowcase? Just wondering 'cos I had a pillowcase that looked just like that once upon a time. :neutral:

Jn

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Axordil
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Posted: Tue 08 Feb , 2005 9:48 pm
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Boxers. With smiley faces.

It seemed appropos at the time. :scratch

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Tue 08 Feb , 2005 9:49 pm
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I like the way the hat matches. :mrgreen:

Jn

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