From owner-freebsd-chat Sun Jun 28 17:50:37 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id RAA07415 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:50:37 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from hwcn.org (ac199@james.hwcn.org [199.212.94.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id RAA07305 for ; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 17:49:40 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hoek@hwcn.org) Received: from localhost (ac199@localhost) by hwcn.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id UAA01513; Sun, 28 Jun 1998 20:43:28 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 20:43:28 -0400 (EDT) From: Tim Vanderhoek To: Eivind Eklund cc: Tim Vanderhoek , drifter@stratos.net, Wes Peters , fpawlak@execpc.com, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Does it's true? In-Reply-To: <19980629010045.04155@follo.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Mon, 29 Jun 1998, Eivind Eklund wrote: > Not true. An infant has people that relate to it, even though they > haven't met it yet. Then doesn't it have (a) value just as you or me? > > However, as you rightly point out, the argument about "potential" > > value in a pre-born infant is mostly null (unless you can > > demonstrate that a particular pre-born was very genetically > > predisposed to developing at some point in the future many strong > > relationships with other humans). > > Wrong in several ways - I included "relationship to self", and it can > have relationships as per the description above. I considered the "relationship to self", but decided its awfully difficult to prove such a relationship when the person having this relationship to self can't even speak, yet. The criteria "relationship to self" is very similar to "self-awareness", and there is certainly hope of (dis)proving that at some point in time, I don't think it's going to happen in the -chat mailing list.... :-) Regardless, you almost sound as if you're argueing against abortion, now. :) > Of course :-) Human worth is a gradual process, much related to at > which point we're conditioned to consider people to have it. It get > ridicilous almost no matter how you slice it, as we're just talking > about an abstraction, a feeling. I would suggest that some definitions are considerably cleaner, in the same way a well-designed computer system is cleaner. -- Outnumbered? Maybe. Outspoken? Never! tIM...HOEk To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message