When does life begin?

[Radical Edward]

Sayonara?said in post #18 :

If ebola was capable of considering self preservation, it would not utterly destroy its host.

 

yeap, and this is a good selfish gene argument. The real purpose of the organism is to serve as a vehicle for the propagation of the replicators which make the vehicle (genes). In the case of ebola, it does not care aout preserving it's host so long as it can propagate it's genes. Ultimately this propagation may be a self destructive one (i.e. it kills all available hosts and then dies itself) but this is just an unfortunate side efect and does not diminish it's initial effort. Humans are a bit of a funny oddity in this, since we aim to preserve our individual existances long after our genetic use has waned. I would take this to a memetic argument, since humans can continue to propagate their memes long after genes cannot be propagated (caused by the meme that values life being propagated by those who are older). This is only a really rough sketch though, people are bound to argue.

[Radical Edward]

Duke said in post #22 :

That doesnt really answer the question though does it. Just because there is a bunch of elements and chemicals lying about the place, what suddenly made them start working together in such a way. What i was asking was; Why did a pool of warm water millions of years ago just suddenly spring to life. Its no good just saying the conditions were right.

 

replicators form through chemical processes. life is just the result of the natural selection of the best replicators. there does not nescessarily need to be any more explanation than this.

[Sayonara]

Radical Edward said in post #26 :

yeap, and this is a good selfish gene argument. The real purpose of the organism is to serve as a vehicle for the propagation of the replicators which make the vehicle (genes)...

Exactly, the function of organisms is to pass on information.

 

In this respect it could be said that ebola does preserve its species, but I see no evidence that this is intentional, considered or even acknowledged by individual organisms of that species.

[Glider]

Duke said in post #22 :

That doesnt really answer the question though does it. Just because there is a bunch of elements and chemicals lying about the place, what suddenly made them start working together in such a way. What i was asking was; Why did a pool of warm water millions of years ago just suddenly spring to life. Its no good just saying the conditions were right.

 

Why not? Why does there have to be a reason for life? If you throw a hundred coins in the air, and they all landed heads up, that is just one of many equally probable outcomes (combinations). Would there have to a reason beyond that?

[Duke]

thats what iv'e been trying to say throughout the thread

[Lauren]

i think life begins when when the first traces of human consciousness is apparent. The very second that one(the developing cells,fetus, whatever) is able to have self awareness or realisation of life is when life begins. However the single cell that is forming is clearly alive else it would not undergo mitosis and differentiate. I suppose that during our life, from being an embryo to being an adult we all undergo different stages of life. life in our developed human form with all our organs etc is certainly different to 'life' of when our cells are still differentiating into whatever. i guess it all comes down to consciousness.

[blike]

Do you then consider someone unconscious or in a coma to be dead?

[Lauren]

no i dont, i guess i should have been more specific. i do not know what it is like to be in a coma, but i am guessing that your mind is sort of just doing the basics; making sure everything is functioning. when a person is in a coma he/she is not aware of what is around him/her and has no thought, almost like a computer on standby. So life begins when you are able to think for yourself, form an opinion, able to feel an emotion...

[blike]

So life begins when you are able to think for yourself, form an opinion, able to feel an emotion...

 

What about newborns? They think for themself, but they don't necessarily have an opinion other than instinct (liking milk, sleep). I know I'm really harping your definitions here, but finding a suitable one is part of the problem.

[Lauren]

thats sort of what im saying. Babies have an instinct ot eat, sleep etc, so i guess its the first 'stages' of consciousnss so to speak.

[matter]

I think when a humans brain develops past a certain point it should be considered alive.

[Dave]

I think when a humans brain develops past a certain point it should be considered alive.

 

Yes, but which point? And how do you know that it has developed to this point? That's the question everyone's trying to answer.

[YT2095]

perhaps it might be worth inverting the question, obtaining the answer and then inverting that!

I often find it works when the direct route doesn`t.

 

so; "Where or when does life end"?

AFAIK, clincaly it`s when brain stem activity ceases. so an answer inversion would be when Brain Stem activity Commences

 

or am I being too logical again?

[Dave]

That would be the most logical answer; however, others say that when an egg is fertilised, the potential is already there for the brain to become active. And when it comes to things like abortion, how do we know for sure that the baby is clinically alive? It's a very complicated issue - it has to be down to your own personal opinion really.

[Crash]

Im going with YT on the brain stem activity commencing, When does this actually happen though?

[Dave]

I have no idea. I presume it wouldn't be a very easy thing to try and determine though

[moonriver]

Well, at least most of us value it higher. The Chinese eat baby girls in the rural areas of the country.

i dont know where you get this idea from. As i know, there are some incident in chinese rural area that some pregnant women want abortion after finding their babys gender due to the chinese male-favor tradition.

[Crash]

Baby would be quite delicious i think:p

[BrainMan]

Life doesn't "begin" for a person because we don't go from dead to alive. There are two living cells that (continuing to stay alive the entire time) develop into a new baby human. But the question was when we value the human life as a person, not when we should consider it "alive", per se. We all know that "living", by itself, is not sufficient to value the life- else killing a plant would be wrong. [unless you believe in a magical infusion of a soul upon conception, in which case you aren't being scientific so I am going to ignore you... ]

 

I like to think of it like this. We have a unch of thread and we are making a sweater. The question is when we should value it as warm. A small patch of interwoven thread doesn't cut it. A complete sweater obviously does. But where is the line drawn?

 

My first tendancy is to say that it becomes a person when it is capable of the higher functions that characterize humans, and capable of human experiences. But one could easily construe this to mean that infantacide is ok for quite some time after birth. And when exactly does "experience" begin? There are no good answers yet... but I would bet that an understandig of consciousness would play into the abortion debate quite heavily.

[-Demosthenes-]

TO me, life begins @ conception. I suppose that's why there's such a big fuss about abortion.

To me also.

And that would be why people argue about abortion, becasue some people believe it is murder to kill human life, and some people don't.

[Glider]

'Life' in and of itself is a poor criterion on which to argue. Algae are alive, as are bacteria. Nobody has an issue with killing them. I think the debate needs to define its terms of reference. At what point does human life become human? For example. At conception, the zygote is a single cell. For all practical purposes, the only things differentiating it from algae are its chromosomes and its potential.

[Radical Edward]

If ebola was capable of considering self preservation, it would not utterly destroy its host.

 

if we were capable of considering self preservation, neither would we

[Radical Edward]

Precisely.

 

We have other options available to us' date=' Ebola does not.

 

I would not attempt to argue that life cannot be interpreted as a destructive force, I'm just saying I see no evidence for Ebola 'valuing its life' and plenty evidence of it having no such notions.[/quote']

 

mind you, just to note. the replicators don't care, they just do what it takes to replicate, even if it drives them to extinction like certain species of irish elk

[Sayonara]

That was kind of my point.

[YT2095]

does anyone know at what point an unborn can respond to external stimuli, I don`t mean, will a cut heal or any other cellular based activity, I mean through 1 or more of it`s 5 senses, in a way that demonstrates clear brain activity/intervention. I would consider it alive from that point onwards. when the brainstem kicks in long before higher functions although I don`t know if there is a "non invasive" test for brain stem activity or not? but non the less maybe there will be eventualy, and I think at that point I would consider it "Human" with all the rights attatched to what being "human" demmands