There was a very good episode of the TV series Boston Legal, wherein a widow donated her husband's body to a teaching museum https://www.bu.edu/articl...
It's taking the bodies for the public's use. Just as it would have to pay market value when it appropriates private lands to make a park or sport stad...
Well, that law needs changing. It's wrong. It's as if the state barged in, wrecked a dead guy's house, and then charged the survivors for rubble remov...
No. That's why I have stuck to the organ issue. I have a strong aversion to suspending the animation of brain-dead people in any situation (but for a ...
The law is a result of legislation within a constitutional framework, which is based on stated moral principles. Every new law is assessed by a series...
To some degree, that has always been the case. Under all legal system I know of, any person may be called to civic service, conscripted, detained, int...
Because in Christianity, humans, locks, stock, body, soul, progeny and livestock are the property of God, and only God has the authority to decide whe...
I didn't. I made no ethical determination. I asked what the legal position is as to citizenship, religious privilege and ownership of human bodies. It...
My initial problem is with the word 'harvesting'. The citizenry as a crop; the government as reaper. There is something very skewed about that concept...
I have trouble picturing that. Their lives are very different. One is short, yes, and in that short time, the mayfly goes through the cycle of birth, ...
It not only can, I believe the best long-term relationships do. Even if there was an immediate physical attraction, keeping enough distance to know an...
I think each being would define consciousness - would define everything that it encounters, learns and experiences - according to its own understandin...
Depends on the species. Do it on microbes and the results are very quick: biological weapon in fifteen minutes; global pandemic in two years. But ther...
Forgetting is necessary to emotional creatures. I think it's a very big mistake to program emotion into computers. They don't need it in order to surv...
I don't have that problem anymore: my children are in their middle, most powerful years, among the decision-makers. And they have - to my way of antiq...
In principle, it may not be. In results, it certainly is. Nature selects for what is most likely to survive and thrive. Man selects with quite differe...
Pretty much. People - also water buffalo and sunflowers - are ends in themselves as far as karma is concerned; to evolution, we are all either means o...
It's an emotional one. He's not calculating costs or justifying means; he's just following paternal instinct. 100 what? Terrorists who were holding hi...
What've they got to be grateful for? Working dogs might lick your hand and draft horses might snort happily into their feedbag, but this is an intelli...
In the mind of the one decides to take a destructive action. Not because his back is against a wall, or his child is in immediate danger, and he's run...
I should imagine so. That is what evolution does. So it behooves us to make sure we develop a symbiotic relationship with AI. Even when it no longer n...
I like that! Excellent summary. Of course, there is a down-side. No long-term plans or policies. And if the opposition is ruthless enough, they'll fin...
Okay. He may not* have been an evil genius, but he was an evil influence. (* I don't find the apologists very convincing; it's hard to imagine a thoug...
Sounds kind of like washing the clay feet of one's idol. At the time, vivisection was considered normal and necessary to the advancement of science, a...
They were called by one name, the real and the BS, in Athens, and we Eurocentric moderns inherit their language as holy writ, because we take 4th c BC...
Yes, we're certainly more hypocritical. We have anesthetics, but we're still experimenting on cats, dogs, rabbits, monkeys and countless rodents. We'r...
Nobody gets out of the history books. If they're influential, they're in there, for good or ill, whitewashed or besmirched, nailed to the past forever...
Right. So, all the anatomists were doing it; Descartes gave them philosophical absolution, but did not practice it himself, because A He was too nice ...
How do you think they could study circulation and the working of muscles? And how do you keep the subject still while you're uncovering organs and mus...
I think that applies to science. Philosophy emerges from the need to organize the world into a discernible pattern. (And religion, to control its forc...
Can't be helped, I'm afraid. Some people on this thread have demonstrated his influence on modern times, but you can only go by what people say. You c...
If the Wiley article doesn't give enough references, here is another possible source: https://www.animallaw.info/article/detailed-discussion-philosoph...
Officially, it ceased to exist circa 1980, following a decade of decline. Politicians, even progressive ones, started appealing to "the middle class",...
What aspect of philosophy isn't? I simply chose to draw the line of definition at the earliest known evidence of abstract thinking. Exactly because it...
His intention is quite clear. Here it is again: “ view is not so much cruel to beasts but respectful to human beings… whom it absolves from any suspic...
It doesn't have to be directly connected to have an influence. A whole powerful movement's mind-set was established in that time, though not by Descar...
There is one point of major corruption for people in power. They can, while others are prevented from doing likewise. Dictators seem to acquire a tast...
I didn't claim that. I merely reiterated that it is not power that does the corrupting. Nor is chance, or even games of chance, that cause gambling ad...
Not really. Descartes was not 400 years ago: Descartes is among us, still exerting influence. As you have seen in this very thread. What you character...
YES. And all his acolytes. Actions speak louder than 'positions'. The father of modern science gave moderns science license to torture, degrade and us...
I should think it's both, as the very concept of moral corruption is exclusively human, as are the environments in which it occurs. Human nature both ...
Where do they come from? Britannica says and Richard Watson, the author of the article, seems to have some pretty thorough background work, to go by t...
That reason tends to make better decisions than emotion? Sure. What kind of trouble? Is there a child in the river? It's better to get into a boat tha...
How about by the constant standards of cultures that understood the evident kinship of humans and other animals long before gentlemen in stiff collars...
I didn't say it was inconsistent with the times - just well above beyond the call. It wasn't disregard or unconcern; it was deliberate, methodical tor...
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