Liberals love science - until it proves them wrong.

[Joel]

How are you defining presence of a function that is not active?

You're overthinking it. Can you, or can't you, reasonably point to something and say "that is a computer"? If you do so, and another person says "But it's currently powered off! So it's not a computer!", have they made a relevant point? No.

You've got this backwards. I'm not the one saying any human being isn't a person. You are. You are the one carving out an exception. Thus I'm asking how you are defining "presence of a function that is not active" such that it carves out the exception you want to carve out.

Yes, obviously not-currently-active is not a relevant point. That is exactly my point. It doesn't make a computer not a computer, and it doesn't make a human fetus/infant/toddler not a person. So I assume you must have some special definition that allows you to say that it makes an infant not a person. (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.) So I'm asking you to clarify.

He supports the right to "abort" infants that are several weeks old.

In this thread he extended it to until a child is speaking.

[Starlight]

Joel,

You seem to essentially be asking the equivalent of, "I don't understand what it means to have a skill / ability but not be using it? If someone is 'skilled at football', how can you say they're skilled if they're not currently playing football? And how can you possibly say a newborn baby isn't yet skilled at football, when he might one day grow up to be a great football player?"

In the one case, the person has the skills and ability, they exist but aren't in use. In the case of the infant, those skills don't exist, and instead there is merely the possibility that they might exist in future.

You appear to be asking why an adult who is temporarily unconscious, whom everyone would agree currently possesses all the capabilities, capacities, and functions of higher thought, language, intention, memory, etc, but where those are not currently active due to a temporary state of unconsciousness... is different to a newborn where such things are not present because they don't yet exist, but where they have the potential for development at some time in the future. My answer is: Something that exists is different to something that doesn't exist.

Can a newborn speak? No. Can they perform a logical reasoning task? No. Over the first few years of life, their brain undergoes extensive internal development and rewiring in order to give them the ability to have such skills. This is an evolutionary adaption due to the narrowness of the birth canal in humans (due to humans walking upright) compared to other animals, because the baby's brain gets squeezed during birth as it travels through the birth canal, which would lead to serious brain damage in a developed brain. So instead, the brain of a human baby is very underdeveloped, and doesn't form all the connections required for higher thought and learning until the first few years after birth. Mammal babies in the animal kingdom are generally fully functional within minutes of birth, and can move / forage etc because their brains are far more developed.

[Joel]

Joel,

You seem to essentially be asking the equivalent of, "I don't understand what it means to have a skill / ability but not be using it? If someone is 'skilled at football', how can you say they're skilled if they're not currently playing football?

No you still have that part backwards, as I said.

And how can you possibly say a newborn baby isn't yet skilled at football, when he might one day grow up to be a great football player?"

In the one case, the person has the skills and ability, they exist but aren't in use. In the case of the infant, those skills don't exist, and instead there is merely the possibility that they might exist in future.

You appear to be asking why an adult who is temporarily unconscious, whom everyone would agree currently possesses all the capabilities, capacities, and functions of higher thought, language, intention, memory, etc, but where those are not currently active due to a temporary state of unconsciousness... is different to a newborn where such things are not present because they don't yet exist, but where they have the potential for development at some time in the future.

My position is that human infants typically do have the capacity for spoken/written language. You and I (as former infants) are proof. If Starlight then did not have the capacity, then Starlight could never have produced the action. So the capacity clearly did exist then.

So you must be talking about something different than that. Something else, that didn't exist then. I'm not sure what. In both cases (infant and temporary coma) the capacity exists, while the action is only a potential. (Capacity is capacity for future action.)

At some points in reading what you write, I suspect that you mean not a capacity to do the action, but something more restricted like a capacity to do-it-right-now. But, besides being an arbitrary restriction, that capacity doesn't exist right now in the person in a temporary coma.

Or you are perhaps thinking in terms of physical structures in place where all that is needed is for someone to flip on a switch (like on the computer, or what you seem to mean by football skill). But, besides again being an arbitrary restriction, that doesn't exist right now in the person in a temporary coma, where we suppose that the person's physical structures are damaged, but the body is healing/developing them to the point where the physical structures are in place and the action will manifest. You might suggest the person in the coma is fewer steps away, but besides the number of steps away being arbitrary, it still means the physical structure isn't fully in place, which is true of both cases.

So what (non-arbitrary) thing exists in the case of the coma that doesn't exist in the case of the infant?

[Starlight]

Joel,

Your apparent inability to distinguish between things that exist in the present, and things that have the possibility of existing in the future, is somewhat disturbing. Your focus on your somewhat unusual interpretation of the word 'capacity', where you blur the distinction between present and possible future, seems to be what's leading you astray.

I'm done with this conversation.

[Joel]

Joel,

Your apparent inability to distinguish between things that exist in the present, and things that have the possibility of existing in the future, is somewhat disturbing. Your focus on your somewhat unusual interpretation of the word 'capacity', where you blur the distinction between present and possible future, seems to be what's leading you astray.

I'm done with this conversation.

If I'm misguided, I hope you (or someone) would point out my error, not just leave.

I'm carefully distinguishing "between things that exist in the present, and things that have the possibility of existing in the future". Capacity/ability must be able to refer to capacity for something not yet actual. (And must be the case in our context of a capacity that is not currently active.) Yes? But if that means that the capacity itself is not actual, then that would imply that there is no such thing as capacity.

Let's consider your example of a computer that is not currently computing. The activity of computing is not actual (only potential) while its capacity to compute is actual. Thus it is an actual capacity for something not yet actual. Such a capacity (for something not currently actual) must exist or else you'd have to say a computer is not a computer if it isn't currently computing.

And we can distinguish capacity/ability (in an existent) from mere potential/possibility. A sapling has the capacity to grow into a large tree. The large tree is not actual, but the capacity is actual in the sapling. In contrast, a pile of bricks/lumber/etc may possibly/potentially be assembled into a house, but the pile of bricks/lumber does not have (in itself) the capacity to become a house. It cannot assemble itself. By the contrast we can understand how capacity actually exists now in the sapling, that doesn't exist in the lumber. While both the large tree and the possible house are only potential.

And likewise if you disassemble the particles of the sapling, the resulting mere collection of particles lacks the capacity--to grow into a large tree--that the sapling has. In the disassembling, an actual existing capacity would be destroyed. Even if the technology existed by which we could re-assemble the particles back into a live sapling, the particles, in themselves, would not have the capacity. Both the sapling and the collection of particles may be a potential large-tree. Neither is an actual large-tree. Only the sapling has the capacity in itself to become a large-tree. And again the capacity of the computer can be destroyed by smashing the computer (at which point it ceases to be an actual computer). The fact that the capacity is something that can be destroyed right now implies that it is something that exists right now.

Yes? Where am I going wrong? Where am I failing to correctly distinguish between actual and potential?

[lilpixieofterror]

Look, are you going to remain civil to me if I extend you that courtesy?

You haven't. You and your LPOT he-man hate group felt the need to throw out insults while complaining about insults. Thanks for showing your own hypocrisy and why nobody should trust you to follow your word. Funny thing is, I already knew that you guys couldn't help yourselves and would wreck your own case for me. Thanks again, couldn't of done it without you. Of course, I suppose when you're trying to defend something as undefendable as abortion, any distraction, including doing the very thing you condemn, will have to do.

[lilpixieofterror]

You see no difference in an innocent child and a criminal trying to kill you?

Here is the difference: If someone is trying to kill you for absolutely no reason, then you have more in common with the fetus, and the criminal has more in common with the Parent who is trying to abort the fetus.

Of course he sees a difference, but doesn't care. The goal is to mud up the waters so you can keep defending the undefendable act of abortion.

[Sea of red]

You haven't. You and your LPOT he-man hate group felt the need to throw out insults while complaining about insults. Thanks for showing your own hypocrisy and why nobody should trust you to follow your word. Funny thing is, I already knew that you guys couldn't help yourselves and would wreck your own case for me. Thanks again, couldn't of done it without you. Of course, I suppose when you're trying to defend something as undefendable as abortion, any distraction, including doing the very thing you condemn, will have to do.

I did until you kept pestering me. Do you think I'm stupid or something? I knew what you were trying to do and it was never going to work. All you wanted to do was goad me into a debate with you, where you can flame at me for twenty pages.

[lilpixieofterror]

I did until you kept pestering me. Do you think I'm stupid or something? I knew what you were trying to do and it was never going to work. All you wanted to do was goad me into a debate with you, where you can flame at me for twenty pages.

There was no flame war going on at all nor when there had been, if you had showed respect. You didn't even follow your own word and showed you're just a thin skinned hypocrite that can't take what he dishes out. Thanks for showing you earn every insult you receive since you love dishing them out, but can't take them. Yeah, you are pretty stupid, since I knew your he-man hate group couldn't help themselves and just needed a little push. I suppose though when you're trying to defend the undefendable evil of abortion, whining about insults, while freely using them yourself, is a nice way to avoid having to debate the actual science. Even if that means you need to be a hypocrite and use ad hominem's to cover up your own failures.

[Sea of red]

It comes down to a moral question doesn't it? Can we justify killing someone? I say if they are criminals and have had a jury trial and it is decided that they have done something deserving death, or if someone is killed in self-defence, then the killing is justified.

Bit of a slippery slop, don't you think? What if a jury decided a thief was worthy of death, would that be justified? If you believe in objective morals the answer pretty obvious.

So Starlight (was it him) saying that there is some sort of hypocrisy in defending the life of innocent children while supporting the death penalty for criminals is completely off base. There is no hypocrisy there. Two different situations.

I don't think that's what he is getting at. The pro-life rhetoric uses the terminology of life being 'sacred'. So it kinda follows that if life is sacred to the degree you say it is, you would also not be accepting of the government executing someone - though maybe not to the same degree. FYI: That's not personally what I believe. There are plenty of POS (sorry) that deserve death but then again, my morals can be complicated.

[lilpixieofterror]

Bit of a slippery slop, don't you think? What if a jury decided a thief was worthy of death, would that be justified? If you believe in objective morals the answer pretty obvious.

I don't think that's what he is getting at. The pro-life rhetoric uses the terminology of life being 'sacred'. So it kinda follows that if life is sacred to the degree you say it is, you would also not be accepting of the government executing someone - though maybe not to the same degree. FYI: That's not personally what I believe. There are plenty of POS (sorry) that deserve death but then again, my morals can be complicated.

AKA mud up the waters by pretending that the life of an innocent child, who didn't harm anyone, is the same as the life of a criminal, who brutally murdered someone. Yep, typical pro abortionist.

[Sea of red]

Life ends at death. But you know what? legally even in death a human being is still a person. They have an estate, they have rights, they can hold copyrights, you have to treat the body with respect and can't use it for experiments unless given permission, you can't sell the body, you have to have permission to use the organs, etc.


I don't know about the "right to die" it is a complex issue. There is nothing that says you can't actually commit suicide, just that attempting it or assisting with it is illegal. I do know that nobody asks the fetus if it wants to die before killing it.

Well, suicide being illegal is kind of what stops people from doing it; the state will FORCE you to live should you fail. Do you think that's right?

[Sea of red]

AKA mud up the waters by pretending that the life of an innocent child, who didn't harm anyone, is the same as the life of a criminals, who brutally murdered someone. Yep, typical pro abortionist.

Not what I said.

FYI: That's not personally what I believe. There are plenty of POS (sorry) that deserve death but then again, my morals can be complicated.

Sorry.

[fm93]

I don't think that's what he is getting at. The pro-life rhetoric uses the terminology of life being 'sacred'. So it kinda follows that if life is sacred to the degree you say it is, you would also not be accepting of the government executing someone

Yeah, I've always felt that some people who call themselves "pro-life" really just mean "pro-birth."

[lilpixieofterror]

Not what I said.

Sorry.

And yet, here you are, pretending that the other side should care too. Sure, life is considered sacred, taking the life of another, in the brutal act of murder, kind of is a violation of the most basic right of another. Do keep trying to mud up those waters though. The undefendable, has to be defended.