Philosophy revived

[Draconysius]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Wait, I didn't phrase my question as I had wanted to. I was looking for a neutral word and didn't thought of it at first. The real question would be, what makes Humanity, well, Human?

I believe it's because we're the only species that's aware of its death long before it comes creeping up on us. We also have an inquisitive nature; we question everything. Humans are the only philosophers of the animal kingdom.

[KontanKarite]

My reasons for pro choice are these:

**** victims

Back alley abortionist

Life threatening pregnancies.

The first two are my most apparent. You guys are intelligent people. I'm sure you can see where I'm coming from on these.

[red_love_death]

So, conscience?
To be aware of life and therefore have a choice over the direction of it, or to question everything and use the answers for the means of either good or bad...these are more important principles to me than the mere question of what being human is. Moreso, what is good and what is bad also interests me greatly.
I believe that good or bad is more of a situational than a given. A given is privy to the masses, a status quo, a stereotype, and I don't buy into that. A situational depends on the individual; not all good or bad things have positive or negative consequences, respectively. So, application of personal goals and principles taught by one's own life lessons rather than others' rates highly in my books, and makes a good and more enlightened person.
Ignotumperignotius.

[PinstripesAndPithHelmets]

So you're saying that subjectivity is good? Bear in mind, I'm not trying to be antagonistic, I'm just not sure what you're saying.



As for the issue of abortion as a means of dealing with unwanted pregnancies, I found this quote amusing:

"Man has solved his problems," Old Jay went on. "Predators he has removed from the earth; heat and cold he has turned aside; communicable disease he has practically eliminated. The old live on, the young do not die. The best wars can't even balance the birth rate. There was a time when a small army could cut a population in half in a year. Starvation, typhus, plague, tuberculosis, were trusty weapons. A scratch with a spear point meant infection and death. Do you know what the incidence of death from battle wounds is today? One percent. A hundred years ago it was eighty percent. The population grows and the productivity of the earth decreases. In a foreseeable future we shall be smothered by our own numbers. Only birth control could save us, and that is one thing mankind is never going to practice."

"Broth-er!" said the patrón. "What makes you so damned happy about it?"

"It is a cosmic joke. Preoccupation with survival has set the stage for extinction."

Sweet Thursday, John Steinbeck (1954)




I swiped this from Caitlin R. Kiernan's online journal, but it seemed appropriate for the discussion at hand. There's too many god damned people on the planet already.

[Cyntrox]

As I see it, a good deed is a deed that benefits others more than the person who performs the deed.

Did that make any sense?

[Skade]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

Wait, I didn't phrase my question as I had wanted to. I was looking for a neutral word and didn't thought of it at first. The real question would be, what makes Humanity, well, Human?

I can't seem to word this without sounding nit-picky - it's not intended that way, I just think the question could be even clearer.
What makes humanity human sounds like a biological question to me. (In a sort of, why are cats felines, kind of way)
What you mean is, what sets Man apart from other species, right? Or do you mean, how can Man be defined?
The only answer I can come up with which covers all of what sets Man apart from other species is: developed thought and complex emotions. It's not a very satisfactory answer, but understanding past and future, understanding mortality, the ability to choose and act according to those choices, the ability to love and hate, etc. are all just parts of being human, in my opinion. I don't feel that they're adequate definitions individually. To take one example, a severely mentally handicapped person might not have the ability to understand time and mortality, or a seriously mentally ill person might not be able to make choices for themselves and judge between right and wrong.

Originally Posted by mrs.wes straker

Having a soul......

Soul is a religious term. In Hinduism and Buddhism the soul isn't tied to human beings specifically but passes through animals also. In primitive religions everything from a grain of dirt to a human being has a soul. In at least one branch of Islam animals are believed to have souls and go to Paradise after Judgement Day. Actually the only religion I can think of that claims that only human beings have souls is Christianity. But if you're defining humanity by Christian beliefs, it would really be more accurate to say that what defines a human being is that we are created in the image of God.
And that was intended to be nit-picky

As for abortion, I'm pro choice. I won't go into reasons, since all the important ones have already been mentioned.

[MollyMac]

Human and humane are a single letter and yet many worlds apart-

I think being human is the capacity to choose, not simply to do.

[Godslayer Jillian]

I would have once agreed with explaining Humanity as a complexity of emotions, but I cannot understand why would we have evolved such emotions which do nothing but complicate our lives. They don't further our species and its survival.
My personal opinion is more similar to that of Draco's. I think Man is Human because Man can acknowledge its own existence. If computers dolphins did likewise (and I think the latter probably do), they would be undoubtedly our equals. Most complications of life and pointless actions must stem from our own self-acknowledgment.

[IsolatedReptile]

On the topic of abortion. I am pro choice, and if you choose to be opposed to it, then leave your politics out of mine, you chose not to for yourself. Your decisions shouldn't impede my freedoms. Secondly, I think men should stay out of it. We don't have the children, we don't carry them or feel parenthood the same way.

On what makes a human a human, I don't feel as though we're any different from animals, we've just evolved in a different way. Our use of tools is drastically different than most animals, though animals actually use tools. We have sex, we eat similar sometimes, we have mannerisms just like some animals do, and we have our sense of etiquette which it seems like some animals do. All of this is not counting that just like animals just like ourselves have unique personalities.

[Mir]

I can't believe in having a soul bullcrap. What makes a human, human? Well, a higher level of consciousness. Does a foetus have any semblance of consciousness? At what stage of the pregnancy does it manifest itself? I will never believe that killing a bunch of cells and tissue is murder and even if it is regarded as such, I'd always be Pro-Choice.

[Clockwork]

A human is what we make of it, what we decide to call it. I think we tend to settle on the physiology, primarily, but the mentality as well - if it looks human and you can communicate with it, then it's human.

In the case of mentally disabled subjects, of course they're still human, but depending on the severity of their condition, they might lack 'human' feeling to them altogether. Mental retardation, comatose, being dead. The characteristics that makes someone 'human' are complex emotions anchored in a human body - can't just be the first, or else advanced space aliens or dolphins could also be human.

I dunno. I lost track of myself, writing that. I had like three more paragraphs I decided to axe...

[Cyntrox]

Jillian, I suspect what you really mean is what separates as from animals. Is this true? If so, here's what I think:

Nothing. Humans are just those who came up on top in the struggle out in nature long ago - we still live on that victory. No one here knows what being an animal is like, so no one here can really say that there's a lot of difference. The whole separation is just by people who had a need to feel superior. Yeah, we're probably smarter than the animals, but that doesn't mean they can't have feelings, right? They can obviously feel fear, pain, happiness etc, so why not everything else?

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by MollyMac

Human and humane are a single letter and yet many worlds apart-

I think being human is the capacity to choose, not simply to do.

I like aphorisms, and I'm always coming up with them. I came up with one recently that sounds like this.

"To be a man is not to wallow in undifferentiated instinct, nor to revile it, but to choose the form of its expression."

Drake

[Drake Dun]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

My personal opinion is more similar to that of Draco's. I think Man is Human because Man can acknowledge its own existence. If computers dolphins did likewise (and I think the latter probably do), they would be undoubtedly our equals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea...Self-awareness

Drake

Originally Posted by Draconysius

Ok, here we go again... we need some intelligent discussions.
I'm going to start off with an issue that's always popular: abortion. Is freedom more important or is human life more important? This is a very difficult question for me because I both believe in freedom and no one has the right to take the life of another, even that young. I'm currently on the side of the pro-lifers, but I'm no god-fearing bible-bashing Christian. I'm agnostic with Buddhist and Taoist beliefs. So sue me. Any thoughts?

"I think your slogan 'Liberty or Death' is splendid and whichever one you decide on will be all right with me." - Alexander Woollcott

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Cyntrox

Jillian, I suspect what you really mean is what separates as from animals. Is this true?

Actually it's not what makes us different than animals. It's just what makes us Human. There's a big difference, even when it only seems differently worded.

Originally Posted by Drake
Dun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacea...Self-awareness

Haha, you rock.

[red_love_death]

Originally Posted by Cyntrox

Nothing. Humans are just those who came up on top in the struggle out in nature long ago - we still live on that victory. No one here knows what being an animal is like, so no one here can really say that there's a lot of difference.

I'd ask what would happen if an animal had the capacity to know what it is to be human. Assuming that we came out on top, what if another species were to evolve to the level of humanity, equally? They could be as complex emotionally, but would their philosophy differ? I wonder whether the 'awareness' we feel would be a universal thing or whether it's just our own personal animal instinct.

[Drake Dun]

I have the feeling that awareness would characterize any sufficiently complex animal. I have no doubt that philosophy, culture, and all that stuff would be very different indeed, given a different species.

Drake

[mrs.wes straker]

Originally Posted by Godslayer Jillian

I would have once agreed with explaining Humanity as a complexity of emotions, but I cannot understand why would we have evolved such emotions which do nothing but complicate our lives. They don't further our species and its survival.
My personal opinion is more similar to that of Draco's. I think Man is Human because Man can acknowledge its own existence. If computers dolphins did likewise (and I think the latter probably do), they would be undoubtedly our equals. Most complications of life and pointless actions must stem from our own self-acknowledgment.

When I said, "Having a soul...", I did trail off. I meant this and more w/ my answer. Besides the obvious scientific things that make us human, it's social. OK, goodbye, baby just woke up.

[Draconysius]

Humans are animals that have instincts, thought patterns, and knowledge gained subconciously from descendants, just like any other animals. The weird thing is, how did very animalistic primates evolve into neanderthals, and then all of a sudden gain aspects not seen in any other animal to date? Could it really be self-realization, or did this gift/burden of human-level-intelligence arrive from somwhere else?

[Draconysius]

By the way, I'm not talking about a god. Maybe an alien race. Call me nuts.

[Drake Dun]

It's simpler to just posit that symbolic reasoning represents a threshold, beyond which you get a kind of gestalt effect.

Drake

[MollyMac]

Originally Posted by Draconysius

By the way, I'm not talking about a god. Maybe an alien race. Call me nuts.

Nuts!!!!!!

All animals have instinct, i think humans tend to have notions of repercussion

[djaeternum]

Just some thoughts to throw out there.

First, my background. I'm a senior at Arizona state University in History and Religious Studies. Particularly in Religious Studies, some of the major theoretical problems we deal with are "what is it to be a human?" and "what are values/beliefs?" Personally, the most major informant to my understanding of the subject is Peter Berger, who sort of perfected Émile Durkheim's sociological view of religion into a more rationa, scientific form that doesn't peddle in Eurocentrism and value judgements.

That being said, I can't really say either way on the issue. Society will define what it means to be human, and what human life is for itself. It's erroneous to talk about "natural" rights of any sort - "rights" are a cultural creation that start and end with human thought and social organization. What we ought to say, to better reflect empirical reality, is that we are attempting to define human life and socially permitted action in one way or another.

To say that there is a "right to life" or a "right to choose" are both equally created and religiously true to their adherants. Empirically, humans are born, and recognized by certain physical traits arising from their 23 genetic pairs. When we ask what it means to be human, we are really searching for a coherent meaning with which to thread together all of the actions humans observably engage in, especially as it relates to other humans (eating, drinking, sleeping, procreating, working, and all the various permutations therein).

Just my two cents.