From: Clint O'Dell (clintodell@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Aug 18 1999 - 10:31:57 MDT
>This depends on whether or not the entity is conscious, and has functioning
>systems to provide pain to that consciousness. I personally doubt that
>embryos are conscious, but this is merely a hunch, as the truth is we just
>don't know yet.
So are you saying that we should hold off experimenting with human embryos
because we don't know if they're conscious or not? What about other animal
embryos? Is it ok to experiment on them because their not human? Why?
>The fear of death as a concept is a primal instinct - as with the vast
>majority of concepts humans come into contact with, there is an associated
>emotional response. This is not built on logical thought - and as such is
>knowledge independent. Again, the question is does an embryo have the
>necessary systems?
It has occurred to me that all emotions are varying degrees of fear, and
pleasure. I assume that hate must be developed after fear because you hate
someone that can do you harm. To recognize that you must fear the thing you
hate. A baby learns that it is happy when it feels good and its parents
reinforce that feeling. Later it learns the word for happy. I'm not sure
how it learns fear. Why is a baby scared when no one is around? Is it
because it is feeling uncomfortable, looks around for its parents that
usually make it feel comfortable, can't find them and starts to fear that it
will always be uncomfortable? It seems to me that this infant would
eventually associate situations with varying degrees of comfort. Sounds
pretty logical to me. What do you think?
>Identity? What is it? Ny name? How is this relevant to the fear and pain of
>death?
This is a mistake on my part with wording. I was trying to say that it
doesn't have a personality. I realize that it doesn't relate though so I
take it back.
>we're still animals after all. We don't use logic to create emotions
Above I think I showed how an animal (an infant anyways) creates emotions
based on fear and comfort. I have taught myself to control my emotions by
picturing certain situations or changing my thoughts to create desired
emotional responses. So you can use logic to create emotions. Whether or
not you'd want to do this is a different story.
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