Posted on 03/25/2005 9:14:55 PM PST by freespirited
I don't believe he's talking about what you think he's talking about.
Hard to tell, and I could have gotten him wrong, but it goes to his materialism, not to a claim Terri Schiavo's brain activity is flat lined and cannot be measured by EEG. He might say Terri Schiavo's is dead and gone because her material brain is so badly damaged that whatever was Terri is dead and gone.
The brain is material. Mind and personality are not. The brain may still function at some minimal level, he might say, but the mind and personality that was Terri Schiavo is long gone . . . dead.
I disagree.
From what I read I think you've got it right.Hard to tell, and I could have gotten him wrong, but it goes to his materialism, not to a claim Terri Schiavo's brain activity is flat lined and cannot be measured by EEG. He might say Terri Schiavo's is dead and gone because her material brain is so badly damaged that whatever was Terri is dead and gone.
The brain is material. Mind and personality are not. The brain may still function at some minimal level, he might say, but the mind and personality that was Terri Schiavo is long gone . . . dead.
I disagree.
I agree with Hitchens on the larger point. To say that there's some kind of super-natural organ that's merely attached somehow to the natural brain is just wishful thinking and a reification fallacy. (Sorry, theists. :-/ )
But I do disagree with him that it makes sense to think of her as dead just because her cerebrum doesn't exist anymore. Our mind is many-layered, and a lot of who we are and what we think & feel is contained in the lower parts of the brain. He's drawing the line in a very bad place. Terri's not dead until she's truly brain-dead by the standard definition.
IOW, she is being murdered.
I have been reading the Robert Wendland transcripts-He's the guy who could use a motorized wheelchair, pick up colored blocks, write the letter R.
Basically, his wife wanted to jerk his feeding tube, and starve him to death. Her expert witness in this endeavor- Dr. Ronald Cranford who diagnosed Terri as PVS.
It's very disturbing testimony, very long, and I couldn't believe that some of the District Court's didn't seem to see that starving someone who can scoot around in a wheelchair is a bad thing.
It certainly opened my eyes to the "right to die with dignity" agenda that Cranford, Felos, and company are pushing.
If your disabled spouse is a burden, don't give up conservatorship, kill them with the court's blessing.
In the testimony, he was compared to a trained animal. God help us all.
I'm a theist who's a little slow on the uptake. Are you saying that you don't believe in the concept of the soul? Or that the soul's existence is not tied to the "natural brain."?
IOW, she is being murdered.
That one I was able to follow. Couldn't agree more.
Noticed after posting that I miswrote my second question. The intended question was: Or that the soul is not tied, at least temporally speaking, to the existence of "natural brain"?
Readinng the transcript suggests to me that if we were take away Hitchens' British accent we would be left with nothing.
Um, no. You are dead wrong. And the correct way to say it is, in the words of C.S Lewis.. "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
A wonderful rejoinder to Hitchens. As with virtually everything C.S. Lewis wrote, I nod my head emphatically and say amen.
Lewis was at one time in Hitchens' shoes, so to speak. Here's hoping Hitchens follows in Lewis footsteps.
'phil' donahue would've pulled the tube himself and called you a nazi for opposing it
the 'bill' donahue arguing on terri's behalf is a big time catholic operative
hitchens athiesm is fixated in a very immature state of defying the defenseless: he hasn't yet caught on to the fact that literalists, obviously attached only to their own misunderstanding of texts that have suffered many generations of translation and interpretation, can't even hold sway in the middle east any longer--let alone here
Bill Donahue is the leader of the Catholic League.
I'm saying that the "soul" is not a separate entity from the functioning person. They're two ways of looking at the same thing.
Reification is the logical fallacy where a person takes an abstract concept & thinks it must be a concrete entity. That's what the Idealist does when he says that we must have a separate supernatural "soul" thing to explain the fact that we have minds & a sense of self. It may make it easier for us to visualize the concept of "mind" or "self", but it's really just an analogy. (And a flawed one, IMO, because it misdirects our thinking.)
Now, many theists will respond that I must not believe we have minds if I reject the reality of a soul. But step back & consider: The fact that we have minds is as axiomatic as the fact that we have bodies. No conversation, nor even thought, can begin unless we accept that there are bodies & minds there to do the thinking.
The only thing that is not axiomatic is whether our minds are somehow "supernatural" vs. natural, or somehow separate from our material selves vs. simply another name for our material selves when viewed at a higher level of abstraction.
This is why I'm just as appalled at Terri's murder as you are. (And why I'm revolted at Chris Hitchens' decision to draw the line between life & brain-death at the point that he did.)
[incindiary:] And the correct way to say it is, in the words of C.S Lewis.. "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
Ah, the classic Idealist view: The supernatural soul is what's driving things, and the material body is just along for the ride. The classic Materialist view would be that the body is what's driving things, and any notion of "mind", let alone "soul", is an ineffectual side-effect of the body. As an Objectivist, I'm saying that "soul" and "body" are simply two sides of the same coin.
Here's a simple analogy: Take 3 pennies & drop them on the table. How many objects are there? 3 pennies? Yes, but what about the 4th item: The triangle? How much does the triangle weigh? If the answer is zero, then is the triangle really "real"? Where did the triangle come from? Who put it there? If you melt the pennies down into a single blob, where does the triangle go? And who takes the triangle away from the pennies? etc. etc.
I say that the only way to avoid stepping into absurd positions WRT the triangle is to accept that a "triangle" is simply a different way of thinking about the 3 objects that make it up. The Idealist way forces you to posit an angel whose job is to grab a Triangle from some big pile-o-triangles sitting somewhere in supernatural-land & paste it onto the pennies. The Materialist way forces you to say that the triangle isn't real, yet there clearly is a triangle there.
Please don't assume that everyone siding with Terri is a religious conservative. My husband is a Democrat and I haven't set foot in church in about 20 years. But we both want Terri to live.
Good point. So in Saudi they stone women for adultery.
Here we dessicate them for being disabled.
This is a really interesting topic. I have my beliefs on this, but to be honest I want to study it more, so I can better explain what I believe.
I'm glad that you are not a materialist, because I think it's obvious that we are more than just physical beings. So your position is that the soul is a property of the brain? Or two ways of looking at the same thing? (from your penny triangle example)
The belief would explain why Terri is still Terri, and it would please the angels, because they would be released from the burden of fetching triangles from the transcendental. :-)
Earlier today I found myself admiring something Jerry Jones had done (refusing an offer from a newly signed Cowboy's free agent who was injured in the off season to give back his signing bonus).
What's next? Hillary Clinton accusing her husband of raping Juanita Broderick?
Nah! That happens and I immediately head for the survivalist stash at the family spread in Wyoming!
Yes, exactly.
The concept, for the most part, originates with Aristotle. I think it's classified as a type of "monism", though monism also includes some rather different ideas as well. Objectivists call it "Objectivism". :-) "Dualism", where body & mind are fundamentally different things, stars with Plato. It seems to have been more popular throughout the history of philosophy. Here's a good (but long) page I found on this stuff.
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