Posted on 01/11/2005 12:29:05 PM PST by beavus
No, it's a joke, son. A play on words. It pokes fun at your contextual confusion. You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense.
I wrote: "A human being is not a string of English letters," You replied: "Yes it is. The first letter is "A", the second is "h", the third is "u", ... A word is not the same thing as its referent. I am not a word or set of words. I am a human being. The English words "human being" refer to members of the species homo sapiens. Those members of the species are human beings.
Now that you've finally learned those basics, how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently.
I wrote: "When I say that a human being is an organism, I am talking about the referent. When you deny that, and claim that a human being is a string of letters, you are talking about the words "human being". This kind of equivocation is basic sophistry." You replied: "No, it is mockery. I was doing to you what you were doing to me. And you still don't get it." Mockery is a form of sophistry.
No it isn't. But it is a form of communication, and you are definitely not getting the message.
You seem to be interested in playing games, in mocking, and throwing insults around.
Well, since you just "ignore" any reasoned approach, I'm left with little else to keep my interest.
I'm simply interested in getting to the bottom of the issue
LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid, Mr. "I ignored it"! I nearly soaked my keyboard! That line alone has made all this repetitious typing worthwhile.
You wrote: "It does not follow. Who taught you logic, a third-grader?" Another ad hominem.
It's hilarious how you insist you are a philosophy professor and don't even know what sophistry or ad hominems are! You're not fooling anyone.
You wrote: "Also, "conception" labels a set of observations during which there is no "at"." Conception is not a set of observations. We observe conception; but conception is in the real world.
Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations (another point you once conceded, now disavow). Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events.
You wrote: "you even agreed that the observations fell along a continuum." To which post are you referring?
Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."
You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!! Prove it.
I'll bet you have a nice collection of broken records at home. The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF. However, it is DEMONSTRATED every time it is OBSERVED. I know I've said it all zillion times before, but you go on and on anyway as though I never did.
You wrote: "AT CONCEPTION" DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Perhaps it does not make sense to you, but it does to me.
Therein lies your malfunction.
You wrote: "I point out the specific errors in your logic--and you ignore them everytime." Show me one error in my logic.
What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you.
BTW, since you choose to put a blind spot over my refutations, I would urge you to take your syllogism to one of your philosophy professors (assuming you are even a philosophy student) and ask him if the argument is valid. He will in very short order tell you why it is not. Maybe the one-on-one interaction will break the spell.
You wrote: "You blind yourself to the obvious both in observation and logic." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "Look. It is patently clear that you are deliberately blinding yourself." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "This has now become a psychological issue, not a logical one." Another ad hominem.
You might want to do yourself a favor and look up the meaning of "ad hominem" so that you can begin to stop embarrassing yourself.
I wrote: "Nothing that Curtis says in the quotation you provide shows that human beings don't come into existence at conception." You replied: "Maybe you are not serious about these replies. Maybe you are just some kid at a computer laughing about how frustrating you can be. I hope so." Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.
Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua. In your case it is so bad that you even claim to have proven they don't exist at all.
The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you.
You wrote: "I Wait, I can make one last gasp--"at conception" doesn't make sense, since biology shows us that the process of conception is continuous. Biology shows us no such thing, because biology is not metaphysics. From the biological point of view there is no instant when an organism comes into existence. But biology does not deal with existence per se. Existence belongs to metaphysics. And from the metaphysical point of view, there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence.
Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so.
You wrote: "Think before you post next time." Another ad hominem.
Another embarrassing reply.
Son? Another ad hominem. An insult is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is simply any comment (of any sort) that is about the person, rather than about the position or argument.
You wrote: "A play on words."
Telling jokes and playing games is not conducive to any philosophical discussion aimed at discovering truth.
You wrote: "You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Now that you've finally learned those basics"
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently."
Another ad hominem.
I wrote: "Mockery is a form of sophistry"
You replied: "No it isn't."
Yes it is. All use of ad hominems in a philosophical discussions are forms of sophistry. (See for example, the discussions between Socrates and the sophists in the Sophist, the Gorgias.) Mockery is an ad hominem. Therefore mockery is a form of sophistry.
You wrote: "and you are definitely not getting the message."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid,"
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Mr. "I ignored it"!
As far as I can tell, I only ignored fallacies (e.g. heaps of ad hominems) and red herrings. But, you are welcome to point to something that I should not have ignored, and which shows your position to be correct and my position to be false.
You wrote: "Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations"
I agree.
You wrote: "(another point you once conceded, now disavow)."
I do not disavow that conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observation. On the contrary, I fully agree with that claim.
You wrote: "Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events."
On this point we disagree. That is because you are taking "observation" to mean merely "biological" observation. But observation is broader than that. Hume, in his Treatise has a section where he talks about a murder, and says that if one analyzes the murder (say, a stabbing) into all its component events: the knife moving toward the chest, the knife penetrating the skin, the knife severing the intercostal muscles, the knife penetrating the heart, etc. one will never find any moral facts. He is right. If one views the stabbing in that merely biological way, one will never see the immorality of the action. But that does not mean that morality is an illusion. It shows that this biological way of observing the event is not exhaustive. Likewise, the biological way of observing conception is not exhaustive.
Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."
Of course, from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*, just as from a biological point of view there is no immorality to the act of murder.
You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!!
I replied: "Prove it."
You replied: The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF."
If you can show that observation shows that there is no specific point of conception, I will abandon my position. But you can only show that *biological* observation does not detect any specific point in conception. *Biological* observation, however, is not exhaustive. *Philosophical* observation shows that there is a specific point of conception. You have not refuted that, (although you have repeatedly *asserted* its falsity).
I wrote: Show me one error in my logic.
You replied: "What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you."
I have read all your posts in this thread. If I have made one logical error, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, your accusation is empty.
I wrote: "Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant."
You replied: "Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua."
If that is the case, then Curtis was constructing an ad hominem. His ad hominem does not show that human beings do not come into existence at an instant. No ad hominem (no matter what its content) shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.
You wrote: "The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so."
Merely asserting that metaphysics does not show that there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence does not make it so. If a biologist insists that philosophy does not show that human actions have any moral quality, that does not make it so. You are trying to use biological observations to refute philosophical observations. But biological observations do not refute philosophical observations. If you want to know why that is the case, read Maritain's An Introduction to Philosophy.
-A8
No, an ad hominem is an ARGUMENT from insult. It plays no part in my argument which I've repeated often enough.
Telling jokes and playing games is not conducive to any philosophical discussion aimed at discovering truth.
Oooooo. But ignoring arguments, being absurdly presumptuous, and putting outrageous words in my mouth is. I see.
Another ad hominem.
Another misnomer.
I wrote: "Mockery is a form of sophistry" You replied: "No it isn't." Yes it is. All use of ad hominems in a philosophical discussions are forms of sophistry. (See for example, the discussions between Socrates and the sophists in the Sophist, the Gorgias.) Mockery is an ad hominem. Therefore mockery is a form of sophistry.
Mockery is not an ad hominem and it is not sophistry, unless you think Rich Little was a professional sophist. Both ad hominems and sophistry are arguments. My mockery and insults are very amusing, allude to the truth, but have nothing to do with my argument.
As far as I can tell, I only ignored fallacies
Riiiiiiight. I don't know what you think you are protecting with those blinders.
On this point we disagree. That is because you are taking "observation" to mean merely "biological" observation. But observation is broader than that.
Which observation have you made that contradicts the observation of the continuity of the process of conception?
Hume, in his Treatise has a section where he talks about a murder, and says that if one analyzes the murder (say, a stabbing) into all its component events: the knife moving toward the chest, the knife penetrating the skin, the knife severing the intercostal muscles, the knife penetrating the heart, etc. one will never find any moral facts. He is right. If one views the stabbing in that merely biological way, one will never see the immorality of the action. But that does not mean that morality is an illusion. It shows that this biological way of observing the event is not exhaustive. Likewise, the biological way of observing conception is not exhaustive.
(1) That is not observation. (2) I have made no statement regarding morality. Your point could not be more irrelevent.
Of course, from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*, just as from a biological point of view there is no immorality to the act of murder.
Biology, like my point of fact, is about observation, not values. You are, of course, free to continue valuing nonsense.
If you can show that observation shows that there is no specific point of conception, I will abandon my position.
I doubt it. Why should reason or evidence start affecting you now?
But you can only show that *biological* observation does not detect any specific point in conception.
Empirical observation--the way you know things outside your own consciousness.
*Biological* observation, however, is not exhaustive.
Do you have a magic eye, or are you including cognition as a type of observation?
*Philosophical* observation shows that there is a specific point of conception.
No philosophy doesn't.
You have not refuted that
(1) I have refuted your syllogism. (2) No one has ever proved your notion poofism. Your tenacity to that fallacy is also quite bewildering, since there is no moral or religious reason for it.
(although you have repeatedly *asserted* its falsity).
You are shocked that I follow your repetition with repetition? If you READ my posts. You WILL read my refutations. But, we both know your blind spot will not let you do that.
I have read all your posts in this thread. If I have made one logical error, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, your accusation is empty.
You are so funny. Read my responses to your syllogisms. You have only ignored them--something I am about to return in kind.
I wrote: "Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant." You replied: "Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua." If that is the case, then Curtis was constructing an ad hominem. His ad hominem does not show that human beings do not come into existence at an instant. No ad hominem (no matter what its content) shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.
That's it. I am convinced that you are a mentally disabled. I have explained the purpose of Curtis. It does go to the heart of your fallacious thinking. He addressed the fallacy of your method of reasoning, and as such, applies to far more than just human beings.
You have no interest in discussion, reason, or even understanding. I have gladly used insults in response to your blind thoughtlessness but have always responded to your points regarding the issue at hand (without ever using a single ad hominem, BTW). You on the other hand, simply make up elaborate notions about me, pretend you don't understand points even after my elaborations of them, and simply ignore any substantive post I make to you. Communication stopped long ago. The comedy has also stopped. It's now nothing more than a risk of carpel tunnel syndrome.
You don't need reason to be happy. And so, I wish you a happy life.
Beavus claimed on this thread that a human being does not come into existence at some point in time. Beavus's evidence for this claim is that when we look at biological events at the molecular level, we do not see any unique moment.
Beavus is right that when we look at biological events at the molecular level, we do not see any unique moment. But this way of looking at reality is very limited, only showing us a part of reality. The fact that we are unable to see any unique moment during conception when we watch the process at the molecular level does not show that there is no such moment, just as our inability to see any moral facts when analyzing a murder at the molecular level does not show that there are no moral facts about the murder. So, in order to determine whether human beings come into existence at an instant, we need to consider the evidence at other levels of observation.
Here is my argument. We know that any particular organism is not eternal. At some point in time, it did not exist. I did not exist 100 years ago. But I exist now. And from philosophy we also know that for any X at any time t, X either exists at t or X does not exist at t. So it follows that any organism either exists or it does not exist. There is no stretch of time during which an organism both exists and does not exist. Hence it follows that an organism must begin at an instant, even if we cannot detect that instant through molecular or biological observations. Biology narrows down the time window during which an organism comes into existence. Biology provides the information that allows us to determine that before the gametes meet, there is no organism, but by the first cell division of the zygote, there is a new organism. But biology does not narrow the window to an instant. That requires understanding the binary nature of existence. That is a matter of philosophy, based on the nature of being itself, i.e. that something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same sense. When we include that fact, with the fact that organisms come into existence, these facts entail that for each organism, human beings included, there is an instant at which it comes into existence. That is my argument.
Beavus has responded to my argument by claiming that when we look at the process of conception at the molecular level, we do not see any unique event. This is correct, but it does not refute my argument, because seeing no unique event at the molecular level is fully compatible with my argument. The only ways to refute my argument are to show that: (1) there are no organisms, (2) all organisms are eternal (i.e. never come into existence), (3) existence is not binary, or (4) an organism can come into existence over time even though existence is binary. Beavus has not shown any of (1)-(4) to be the case. So, Beavus has not refuted my argument. Moreover, my argument refutes Beavus's original claim that human beings do not come into existence at some point in time. Beavus is free to have the last word if he wishes.
-A8
Actually, I'd argue that's not entirely true. At fertilization (not conception -- they are two significantly different events), when a sperm enters the egg's membrane, the membrane undergoes a change that prohibits any other sperm from entering the egg and the sperm's genetic material combines with the egg's genetic material to produce a complete set. I'd argue that either at the moment where the sperm penetrates the egg's membrane and that membrane changes to exclude other sperm or the point at which the sperm's membrane opens and allows its genetic material to mix with the egg's, you've got two unique events to choose from as the transition point from the sperm and egg being, respectively, parts of the father and mother to both of tehm being a combined organism and new individual.
As for twinning and chimeras, the unique even there involves the biochemical seperation or combination of two bodies of cells so that they either form two individuals or combine into one. With sufficiently good scientific equipment, it should be possible to identify a point in time when the cells either start acting independent of one another or start acting as a single unit which marks the point at which either twinning or combination becomes a foregone conclusion.
The key here is to recognize that the starting or ending of an individual does not necessarily involve the creation or destruction of a body. It may simply involve a change in identity or status for the component cells of the body. Fertilization isn't the start of a new life in the sense that a new life is created. It's the point where the life of a new individual becomes distinct from the life of their parents.
Could you explain what the difference is between a new life being created, and the life of a new individual becoming distinct from the life of its parents?
-A8
A close examination of this period of time shows that there are millions of chemical reactions involved, sequentially and simultaneously, that individually offer no particular distinguishable moment.
With sufficiently good scientific equipment, it should be possible to identify a point in time when the cells either start acting independent of one another or start acting as a single unit which marks the point at which either twinning or combination becomes a foregone conclusion.
But in fact, as experimental techniques improve temporal resolution we find that the events (as I described above) flow fairly smoothly. Low resolution observations may lead us to think there is a precise point, but higher resolution reveals that "point" to be a continuum of events.
The same is observed in death. Not only are multiple nonsimultaneous cell deaths involved, but the chemical process of each cell's death is fairly smooth.
To some people that appears to be the case. However, it needn't be. And of course, if in fact such a beginning does not exist, it becomes detrimental to fighting evil.
I would even go further and declare that there is, in fact a moment observable at the molecular level, at least theoretically. There must be a moment when the unique DNA of the new child is formed. There is, prior to this moment, no DNA with the same pattern in all the world. After this moment, a unique DNA exists and is replicated with the division of the cells.
Beavus is loathe to admit simple facts, choosing instead to retreat into the bizarre world of string theory and quantum mechanics. It is well to remember that many a scientist before Beavus has hidden behind a wall of impenetrable complexity in order to camouflage error.
You are playing the postmodernist game of looking at the forest one tree at a time and then declaring that there is no forest, only trees. Step back and look at the forest.
It's not for the evil that innocence must be explained, but to those who are undecided or confused and haven't come to conclussions on what is wise and what is wrong.
Self-ping for later read
You must have been arguing with someone else. My argument has nothing to do with quantum mechanics or string theory, and is the very picture of simplicity.
Doctor Jérôme Lejeune, R.I.P.: "I have to come back to this concept of conception, because it is a very remarkable fact that in all the languages coming from Latin, we use the same word either to express an idea which comes into our mind, or to a new being coming into life. We conceive an idea. We conceive a baby. A baby is conceived. Conception applies just as well for defining what will animate matter in a human nature or what will animate your mind within your idea.
And that is, so to speak, an extraordinary description of reality which is at the very beginning the information and the matter, so to speak: the spirit and the body are so intimately interwoven that we use the same word to say spirit animated by your ideas, or life of a new human being animated by genetic property-conception.
Now this moment a new human being is conceived is, really, as for the conception of a new constitution, when the whole thing has been spelled out.
Now we know, and I think there's no disagreement among biologists everywhere in this world, that after fecundation no new information goes in. Everything is there, just at the moment after the entry of the sperm, or it is not enough and it will fail. Either the whole information for the human being is there and the human being can develop and organize, or it is not there and no human being will develop at all.
Now nature has invented an extraordinary device to tell us that nature does protect the privacy of the very first stage of the human being. The right of privacy is written in that way in biology.
The egg is a little sphere of one millimeter and a half in diameter. But it is not naked. It has some plastic bag around it that we call from Latin zona pellucida, because you can see through it. And this very curious plastic bag is, in fact, the perfect control of the privacy of the new being because as soon as the head of the sperm who got there first was able to burrow inside the zona pellucida, as soon as the head comes inside, suddenly in a micro-second, this lucida, this transparent membrane becomes suddenly changed physically, and it becomes entirely impermeable to any other sperm.
It's a mechanism of an extraordinary precision which prevents many sperm from going inside the one egg."
The state of being alive is an actuality, whereas the action of growth and development is seen as actualization of potentialities. When mitosis with the zygote occurs, we know scientifically that there is actually a new individual life expressing itself. Some would argue that there isn't an individual life since twinning can still occur. But that ignores the actuality of a life expressing itself, regardless of whether a second or even third life may begin within a few cell divisions. If such a second and or third life expresses, that doesn't negate the actuality of the initial life expressing his or her actual self.
I haven't declared that there is no forest. And, in a forest, there truly are trees. Things are frequently seen to change along continua. I can give you many other examples if you like. That doesn't mean gametes are not different from babies. It just means that there is no nonarbitrary instant which one can point to within the continuum (by definition of "continuum").
I don't disagree with you. But I am not speaking about innocence or evil, just simple observation. And if you think about it, what does it really matter, for your purposes, if there is a smooth gradation of change or an instantaneous poof?
I like that! Very good stuff. :-) Thanks.
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