Herg

We're in the same boat. We currently have one dog, and in the past we've had three other dogs, 16 cats, and 24 guinea pigs. We feed our dogs and cats ...

Ridiculous. What is wrong with someone who supports abortion of pre-sentient foetuses saying they would be willing to perform the abortion themselves?...

I sympathise with both prey and predator, but generally more so with the predator, because a quick death by having the neck severed is preferable to a...

If the bear knows she has a cub, then presumably the cub must be pretty well developed, so when you say 'yet it's ok for humans to do it', what you me...

I am not saying that. I am talking about sentience, not life, and you have not had the guts to face up to my arguments. I am not denying that a pre-se...

Why are you here at all if you hate philosophy so much?

Well, you don't really argue philosophy at all, do you? You've just come on this forum to preach at us and hurl insults. And now you've added ageism t...

LOL. No, I don't engage in philosophical ping-pong just for the sake of it. I concede the field to you. Have a nice day.

I do, as it happens. Here it is, in two parts: 1. It is obvious that an embryo in the first few days could not possibly feel anything, since it is no ...

Yes. Do you know what a circular definition is?

ROFL.

Well, it wasn't me that introduced this red herring, was it?

Nice to see the true spirit of Christian love is alive and well on this forum. ;) I'd be perfectly willing to kill a pre-sentient foetus, but you don'...

No, I'm suggesting that since the word 'natural' pre-dates the scientific method, it must then have had a meaning which did not depend on the scientif...

That would imply that there was nothing natural until the scientific method came along. That doesn't seem right.

The life of a sentient being can have value both to that being and to other sentient beings. Thus my life has value to me, and also to my dog (because...

The fact that if nothing is ever conceived, nothing exists which could be denoted. You can only denote something that exists, has existed, or will exi...

I think you need to be more precise. Parturition involves several stages (https://www.healthline.com/health/parturition#stage-3). At which of the foll...

'Depriving this person' is confused. If there is never to be a conception, then there is no person to be deprived, and so to refuse to conceive a pers...

I take it you mean some sort of essence that makes humans human. This is a myth, there is no such thing. Humans are composed of matter and energy, lik...

I still don't understand what you mean by a 'moral subject.' Please say what you mean by it. Are you using it the way it is used here: ('A moral subje...

The first and last statements here are incompatible. If morality exists only in human consciousness, then there are no objective moral truths; but if ...

If the fact that two people who were nearly aborted turned out to be happy is a good argument against abortion, then presumably the fact that a lot of...

No, it doesn't. Suppose that there was only one man left alive, and he was so brain-damaged that he could never feel anything again. It would not matt...

Exactly: 'if you didn't do anything': that's the whole point here. It's only if you don't abort the foetus that the foetus turns into something that h...

You're right, there is an equivocation in step 4 of my argument between experientially bad and morally bad. Should have spotted that. I concede. Good ...

Very well, since you evidently lack the energy to discuss whether my premises are true or false, I will present my reasons for believing them to be tr...

And you have put no effort at all into making any.

It was only for my third category that I was claiming objectivity, not the first two. They were just anthropological notes, and I don't wish to defend...

It comes from a variety of sources. One is religious belief ('the gods have told us what to do, so we ought to do it'), another is social programming ...

How I wish I was still fourteen-and-a-half. But if anyone in this forum thinks they can move their case forward by quoting edicts from a dead philosop...

And I stopped believing something just because some old dead fart said it when I was 14.

No-one has done it so far, but that doesn't prove that it can't be done.

The explanation is that pleasure is good and pain is bad, and this fact is understood by everyone except extreme moral relativists.

Why should one obey the categorical imperative?

Why is it morally wrong?

Hanover's favourite philosopher is Hanover. Presumably Hanover's favourite fan is also Hanover. Narcissism much?

These two quotes seem to capture the core of your problem. (You'll no doubt correct me if I'm wrong.) I think you're making a false assumption, which ...

I'm a carer for someone with cancer, and unfortunately I now have to leave this forum if I'm to carry out my responsibilities to her. I will try to co...

You seem to be oscillating between two positions: 1) that we cannot judge life to be good or bad 2) that we cannot judge life to be better or worse th...

We normally judge whether a particular life experience is good or bad by measuring it against some personal standard for life experiences (e.g. it's g...

As I said, the reason to believe in the stuff is that it explains why our sensory experience is the way it is. There are other possible explanations (...

This is a double confusion. First, you're confusing the imagined properties of an imagined object with the actual properties of an actual external obj...

This is a category mistake. You are confusing the stuff behind the scenes with our sensory experience of the stuff behind the scenes. The grain of tru...

As an author of fantasy novels who regularly writes about dragons and stuff, I certainly hope one can. I would hate to think I had merely hallucinated...

Wiktionary gives two definitions of 'epiphenomenon': "1. Being of secondary consequence to a causal chain of processes, but playing no causal role in ...

I don't think so. Many people, myself included, regard morality as being essentially about the way we behave towards beings with a mental life (which ...

My suspicion is that these properties are now epiphenomenal, but were not always so. Consider the pain you feel when you burn your finger. Scientists ...

I think these are just properties of concrete objects. It's the objects of which they are the properties that are involved in causation, not the prope...

You're welcome to come and do mine any time. I get heartily sick of washing up - and there's so damn much of it. It's a great mystery to me how two pe...