164 replies to this topic

[Clifford Greenblatt]

I was going to edit the end of my last post with revised questions but cosmos posted ahead of this so I will post the revised questions below for bgwowk. Cosmos- I will have to get to your questions later today or early tomorrow.

1. Suppose there were 100 abandoned babies in a burning building and you had a ten year old child in the same building. Suppose you could either rescue the 100 abandoned babies or your own 10 year old child. Who would you choose to rescue?

2. Suppose there were 100 inmates in a prison who were all guilty of multiple armed robberies but did not actually kill anyone. Suppose you have a ten year old child of your own who was visiting the prison when it caught on fire and you could rescue either your child or the 100 inmates. Who would you rescue?

2. Is it better to spend a huge sum of money on cryonic preservation of ourselves or should that money be used to feed and educate a multitude of starving third world children who would die without this help and who would prosper and be productive with this help?

[John Schloendorn]

I fail to see how the "your own child" - scenarioes relate to anything we have been disucssing. While I think that the 3rd world is an escape maneuver as well, it is at least an interesting one. Lack of investment in 3rd world problems could indeed seem like a good argument against everything nearly anyone is doing. I would encourage you create a new thread to discuss this intriguing idea in depth. Just start with a generic anti-life-extension argument and I'm sure there will be many contributors.

[wolfmoon]

I fail to see how the "your own child" - scenarioes relate to anything we have been disucssing.

Agree. The questions that have been raised in this thread are dealing with sentience, personhood and autonomy. Though personal association can impact moral principles of the individual, this rather goes against the nature of this whole thread (imposing personal association) when the questions asked by the thread are done so in a broad manner seeking objective conclusions rather than subjective interpretation.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

I fail to see how the "your own child" - scenarioes relate to anything we have been disucssing. While I think that the 3rd world is an escape maneuver as well, it is at least an interesting one. Lack of investment in 3rd world problems could indeed seem like a good argument against everything nearly anyone is doing. I would encourage you create a new thread to discuss this intriguing idea in depth. Just start with a generic anti-life-extension argument and I'm sure there will be many contributors.

Does this mean that I need not bother to comment any further on Brian W's ultimate ethics test in this thread?
My anti-life-extension arguments are not truly intended to discourage life extension technology but are use in this thread to show how the principles involved in arguments against guarding the life of embryos would also be principles for arguments against life extension.

[wolfmoon]

Does this mean that I need not bother to comment any further on Brian W's ultimate ethics test in this thread?

I would hope that you do. I find your answers to be interesting and representative of the way many people think.

Brian's question is asking for a decision between an individual and the petri of embryos. There is no personal relationship with the child or the petri embryos, but only the choice of saving one or the other(s).

This is where the rubber meets the road as it were and the point that defines the value of the contents of the petri measured against the value of a 10 year old child. Are the petri contents "people"? If they are you'll be saving 100 "people" by grabbing that dish. Or is the 10 year old child the one that needs saving? The autonomous individual that is clearly already present in the readily apparent sense.

It's a good question and a strong point forcing us to either truly accept the embryos as "people" or not. Kudos, Brian W.

[bgwowk]

I think Clifford is concerned that my ethics test is confounded by the additional variable of possible relationships of the ten-year-old with other people. Very well. Let's stipulate that the ten-year-old is an orphan with no relationships to anyone currently living, just as the 100 hundred embryos. So again, Clifford, do you save the ten-year-old or the embryos?

---BrianW

P.S. I also encourage you to post your cryonics question to a new thread. I'll answer there, and you can pull my answer back here if you think it's really relevant.

[bgwowk]

By the way, Clifford, there are people who object to abortion, cloning, and embryo manipulation on the grounds that it is disrespectful to life. One might similarly object to cutting trees down without good reason based on reverence for life. If that's ultimately your position, I can respect that (even though I might not agree). But to continue to insist on conveying the moral status of personhood on non-sentient entities is just plain bunk. Doing so compromises the well-being of sentient entities, which is what really matters.

---BrianW

Edited by bgwowk, 20 June 2005 - 08:02 PM.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

Here is the argument that disposes of process/potential defintions of personhood once and for all:

Consider a human designed to reproduce asexually by budding.  Every embryo on its way to becoming a grown human splits off a zygote progammed to do the same thing again.  Therefore every zygote is not one person, but AN INFINITE NUMBER OF PEOPLE!  Every zygote is a process cascade striving to become an infinite number of distinct sentient entities.

A finite cell cannot be morally equivalent to an infinite number of entities.  Therefore any definition of personhood based on potential or processing toward development of future entities is internally inconsistent, and therefore invalid.

Have you truly disproved the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI)? I tried to disprove MWI another way but was met with a lack of interest. Perhaps your disproof of MWI may generate more interest. Give it a try and good luck!

There is no way out of that one, Clifford.  Process/potential arguments don't work.  Interferring with a non-sentient process can be a property crime if the process is claimed by a person, but non-sentient processes are not people.

I am not sure that Process/potential is the best terminology for my argument. I see it as an extended spatio-temporal continuity of personal identity argument. My infinite copies poll and my second birthday poll challenged the spatio-temporal continuity of personal identity argument but both directors and notable contributors stuck to the position that such a continuity is essential to personal identity.

[bgwowk]

Have you truly disproved the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (MWI)? I tried to disprove MWI another way but was met with a lack of interest. Perhaps your disproof of MWI may generate more interest. Give it a try and good luck!

You seem to have trouble staying focussed. If you want to start new threads on cryonics or MWI, then fine. But the fact remains that your definition of personhood has been exposed as morally bankrupt. The fact that by your definition the destruction of a suitably engineered cell is morally worse than a trillion Hitlers or Stalins is a reductio ad absurdum disproof. The fact that your definition logically requires elevating the worth of such a cell above a trillion living humans is proof of its moral bankruptcy. Unless you are going to modify your definition, calling the defintion a different name changes nothing.

If you are going to develop a spatio-temporal continuity definition of personhood, why not orient the definition around continuity of sentience? Incorporating processes temporally bounding, but not including, sentience is what gets you into trouble. It's not only the trouble of equating personhood with single cells, but also the trouble of equating personhood with a decayed body in a grave.

---BrianW

Edited by bgwowk, 20 June 2005 - 11:30 PM.

[John Schloendorn]

Since Clifford conceded to save one actual person rather than 100(!) blastocysts (for whatever reason, remember the people saved by therapeutic cloning are not all Orphans), I do not see a strong need to pick on him much further on this matter. Discounting blastocysts for actual persons is after all what the debate in embryonic stem cell therapy is all about, and in reality there should even be a much more favorable actual persons/blastocysts relation than in the example. That is, presuming that the privileged status Clifford granted to the actual person in the burning house would, after the debate, also extend to the hospital and the courtroom.

As for new threads:

My anti-life-extension arguments are not truly intended to discourage life extension technology but are use in this thread to show how the principles involved in arguments against guarding the life of embryos would also be principles for arguments against life extension.

Very well. So here is my take on the 3rd world:

Consider the Gates Foundation. Powered by almost $30 Billion donated by the Gates, the foundation provided, and continues to provide education and medical supplies for entire countrysides. Yet if Gates had donated all his fortune in the early 70s, rather than invested it in the creation of his empire, none of this would have come to exist. This example teaches us that it can be rational to invest in ourselves first, even if helping others is our only goal.

So how does this relate to life-extension?
The great idea to value human persons as desirable ends in themselves was called humanism. Its offshoot, transhumanism, realizes that persons could be valued in a much more consistent and effective way, if persons no longer had an in-built expiry date. Thus, life-extension is at least a helpful tool, but probably a neccessary prerequisite to realize the transhuman vision. That vision is the only plausible mechanism I know of, by which we could fix that which is wrong in the actual, natural world. If we cannot fix many of these thing today, we need to acquire the neccessary economic, technological and personal resources first.

On a sidenote, even if you think that our present resources are sufficient to fix anything in the third world and make sure it stays fixed, I think it would be much more effective to ask half a billion accountants to help, rather than the handful of biogerontologists and cryobiologists we have in the world... The transhuman experiment may not be worth all the resources of mankind, but certainly much more than it has at present. At least, it should not be the first cottage industry to be shut down.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

You seem to have trouble staying focussed.  If you want to start new threads on cryonics or MWI, then fine.

But the fact remains that your definition of personhood has been exposed as morally bankrupt.

I am highly surprised that you fail to see the glaring relevance of MWI to your infinite budding argument that you claim “disposes of process/potential defintions of personhood once and for all.” For one thing, the budding process could not go on infinitely any more than the world population could become infinite. Also, the MWI multiplies a person at a radically faster rate than does infinite budding. I do not personally accept MWI, but many of the scientifically informed do and your infinite budding idea is mostly hypothetical. You have apparently abandoned your super powerful argument and have decided to charge my reasoning with moral bankruptcy instead.

The fact that by your definition the destruction of a suitably engineered cell is morally worse than a trillion Hitlers or Stalins is a reductio ad absurdum disproof.  The fact that your definition logically requires elevating the worth of such a cell above a trillion living humans is proof of its moral bankruptcy.  Unless you are going to modify your definition, calling the defintion a different name changes nothing.

If I were to call for investing in the lives of embryos at the expense of the lives of children who have already been born then my argument would be morally bankrupt. However, I have done no such thing. The case of 100 embryos in a burning building is a red herring because if I choose to save the ten year old child you would claim that I have made the choice that the embryos are not human. There are some moral choices in which numbers have limited or no relevance.

Your 100 embryo case is quite hypothetical but difficult moral choices are not at all uncommon in the real world. I read about a mother who had two children but only enough food to feed one. When she completed a very long journey on foot to a relief agency, the child that she fed was healthy but the other was beyond hope of recovery from the effects of starvation. She loved both children very dearly and valued both equally but she had to make the most painful decision to save one and lose the other. She hoped the doctors at the relief agency could do something for her starved child but it was too late.

Suppose your country has been attacked by an enemy and you and a nine of your fellow soldiers are guarding a thousand captured enemy prisoners. Suppose a tsunami is headed your way. You could free the thousand prisoners with a knowledge that they might possibly kill you and your fellow soldiers or you could flee to the hills with your fellow soldiers and let the thousand enemy soldiers drown. A choice to save your fellow soldiers would not necessarily be a judgement that the enemy soldiers are not human or are worth less than other humans. The fact that you could ethically choose your nine fellow soldiers above the thousand enemy soldiers does not give you the license to dismember them for medical purposes. This is the kind of thing that Hitlers and Stalins would do.

If you are going to develop a spatio-temporal continuity definition of personhood, why not orient the definition around continuity of sentience?  Incorporating processes temporally bounding, but not including, sentience is what gets you into trouble.  It's not only the trouble of equating personhood with single cells, but also the trouble of equating personhood with a decayed body in a grave.

The problem with orienting the definition of personhood with continuity of sentience is that sentience is not continuous. Are you a nonperson at times during the night and are you a different person every morning when you wake up? Sentience has a proper physical home which remains continuous whether the sentience is present in it at the moment or not.

Edited by Clifford Greenblatt, 21 June 2005 - 09:25 AM.

[bgwowk]

I am very well versed in MWI and measure theory, and in fact I do accept the Oxford Interpretation. I immediately understood your point and its false premises. But I'm not going to discuss quantum mechanics or cryonics unless you start another thread.

The issue of whether a cell can *in fact* produce an infinite number of people is irrevelant since you have been arguing *potential* all along. The "drive" and "intelligence", to use your terminology, of the cell is to become an infinite number of people. To argue that a cell is a person because of what it can become (regardless of whether external conditions are favorable to development or not), but then say a cell cannot be an infinite number of people because of unfavorable external conditions is a double standard. Unless you are saying that a zygote without a uterus available to it is not a person?

But then again, why should I be surprised if you say that. You've already said that you believe two identical cells can be a person in one case, but not in the other, depending on their history. So why shouldn't personhood be determined by a cell's future as well as it's past?

This debate really ended in the post where you admitted that your criterion for personhood depended on the history of an object. That is patently ridiculous. To borrow a phrase:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by (the history of their atoms) but by the content of their character."

I am done with this discussion.

---BrianW

[Clifford Greenblatt]

This debate really ended in the post where you admitted that your criterion for personhood depended on the history of an object.  That is patently ridiculous.

Then you would agree that a copy of a person can be as good as the original. Make a very good copy, destroy the original, and nothing has changed. Right?

[Clifford Greenblatt]

Right, that is Brian's position as I understand it.

Then Brian's position is 100% logically consistent with naturalism philosophy. Many who claim a philosophy of naturalism are not so logically consistent. Since this debate ended on the point about identical states, I do not want to extend this thread by going off on a tangent. For an interesting discussion regarding that point you may want to see the poll about infinite copies.