Possibilities of Consciousness
Imagine a future that’s filled with robots walking among us, acting like us, talking like us, and except for the metal body, being exactly like us. Would you live in fear of them, or would they’re existence simply excite and motivate your experience of life? The human consciousness is a highly strategic aspect in our lives, but is it only meant for humans? Consciousness is what makes us truly come alive, it’s where we keep our memories, feelings, and the innermost characteristics of ourselves; it’s what makes us truly different from others. If scientists could fully achieve the concept of truly understanding human consciousness and could duplicate it into artificial life, the possibilities would be immensely endless. Human consciousness impacts the legality, morally scientific, and medical aspects we all know and live with, but in this growing world it is constantly enhancing our imagination, and the future keeps enhancing with it. Human consciousness is a well-known concept in the society that is constantly growing and changing the legal fields including abortion. Abortion is an immensely thorny debate in this society that can be taken out of concept and twisted in a way to appeal to your ethical and religious views. Some in society believe that abortion causes the fetus pain and that they can experience to the extent that we ourselves can, in other words believing that to abort a fetus would be equal to murdering a child. To be capable of
Much of the ethical debate stemming from this topic lies with the issue of personhood. Personhood is a concept that defines what is it is that makes a person a “person”. There is no established criteria for this concept and it can vary depending on one’s belief. Patil, Dode & Ahirrao (2014), argue that the concept of personhood is the bridge that connects the fetus with the right to life. If one considers the fetus a person then ethically abortion is wrong. If the fetus is not a person then abortion is ethically acceptable. The issue on personhood mirrors the subjectivity of abortion debate.
Throughout the United States there has always been a big debate on whether or not abortion is ethically acceptable or not. Though many individuals see it as killing a child, many others can overlook that burden and see the consequences of having a child at that point in time. Individuals who are put in a pregnancy situation and have to look into all aspects of an abortion and the reasons for this procedure, while also realizing the biological development of the fetus, and the process of an abortion.
To begin it is important to understand halakha which is the jewish law that governs the status of an unborn fetus and whether or not abortion can occur. First off I will be discussing Rabbi David Novak from University of Toronto’s, short paper titled “Abortion”, in this article Rabbi David Novak takes a neutral stance and states that there are two sides to the argument of abortion in Judaism. Rabbi David Novak starts by stating that the most common belief in modern Judaism is as follows ,“On one side are those who see the fetus as "a human within a human" (Sanhedrin 57b, re Genesis 9:6). On the other side are those who regard the child as a human person only after it emerges from the womb (Rashi on Sanhedrin 72b, re Ohalot 7.6); before that, it is simply a part of the mother's body.” (Novak).
Consciousness it is a state of awareness on both the external and internal actions and reaction toward different stimulus. Consciousness has greater impacts on our daily life and could influence survival of different organisms that lives on planet earth. The benefits is that it offers protection as it control the self .Consciousness regulate what we think and the reaction that we respond to the different experiences that we undergo on daily basis. Also, it allows us to either allow a thought or respond or terminating the thought as it might be not useful both the inner and outer experiences.
Mary Anne Warren in On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion stated the characteristics which are central to the concept of personhood which are “sentience, emotionality, reason, the capacity to communicate, self awareness, and moral agency” (Cahn 193). In Warren’s requirements, adults are placed in the “persons” category. On the other hand, fetuses are not “persons” since fetuses do not abide
One of the most important philosophical issues ever concerns the definition of a person and who is able to feel. Abortion, which is a deliberate termination of pregnancy, is one of the most important practical applications of that issue. Life on Earth is threatened with destruction from overpopulation and the poverty that overpopulation causes. Fortunately, abortion can prevent overpopulation. The question about whether abortion should be done is primarily the question about whether the embryo or fetus is a person. In most cases, the embryo weighs less than 100grams: less than 10% of human brain. Abortion should be legal since it is useful and since humans become conscious after birth, not before.
A fetus is made of everything that it needs to survive and become a human being with a distinctly human conscious, yet a fetus doesn’t have this conscious (Pro-CAN). Science has proven that the fetus doesn’t have a conscious during the standard time of abortion because a fetus doesn’t develop a nervous system or brain until the last stage of pregnancy. This following quote supports this claim: “Since consciousness depends on the development of the nervous system, and since it takes many months for the nervous system to mature, we can conclude that consciousness emerges gradually.” (Smith). Without a nervous system or a brain a fetus can’t feel, think, have emotions, memories, or awareness (Pro-CAN, and Smith). Thus, a fetus is as alive as a plant, a plant that can’t survive by itself. Furthermore, it is important to define human life before determining if a fetus experiences human life. The fetus is a live, and it is human, but it doesn’t experience human life because of it’s lack of human conscious. An actual human being experiences human life, therefore a fetus only has the potential to have a human conscious and does not actually experience human life (Pro-CAN). All of these statements conclude that a fetus doesn’t experience human life at the time of standard abortion, so consequently abortion isn’t
Is it considered murder if it’s not yet capable of thought or “sensation”? The Catholic Church throughout history has maintained the viewpoint that it is morally wrong from the time of conception. While early Christians, including Father of the Church Augustine, believed that Aristotle’s view was accurate in that sometime after conception the unborn child gained a soul, they generally condemned the entirety of the act of abortion as a sin. The severity of the sin has not been officially determined, but many believe it to be akin the sin of sexual immorality.
Since the legalization of abortion, more than 126,000 abortions have been performed every day and more than 46,000,000 each year (AbortionTV). One may say they can’t understand how a mother can just kill her child because of her irresponsibility. She may rebuttal back with the answer that the fetus is not yet human and it wouldn’t feel any pain anyway. Studies show that the
“On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion”, an essay written by Mary Anne Warren, defend abortion in any stage of a woman’s pregnancy (pg 468). Warren argues that the potential to become a human being is not the same as being human and deserving the same right to life (pg. 468-472). This essay asserts that in order to be human, one must possess five particular traits (pg. 470). These trait are consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the ability to communicate, and awareness of oneself (pg. 470). Warren claims that since a fetus has not yet acquired all of the traits, then that fetus is not human and therefore does not have the right to life (pg. 470).
Lately there have been more and more smart machines that have been taking over regular human tasks but as it grows the bigger picture is that robots will take over a lot of tasks now done by people. But, many people think that there are important ethical and moral issues that have to be dealt with this. Sooner or later there is going to be a robot that will interact in a humane manner but there are many questions to be asked like; how will they interact with us? Do we really want machines that are independent, self-directed, and has affect and emotion? I think we do, because they can provide many benefits. Obviously, as with all technologies, there are dangers as well. We need to ensure that people always
A long on-going subject that has been greatly debated in our society is abortion. Many people argue that because the baby in the mother’s womb is not alive, aborting him or her is not considered a murder. However, others say that as the baby’s heart and brain are the first things to develop, the baby is technically alive and killing it would be a murder. As soon as the baby has a heartbeat, it has life. Abortion has many characteristics of a murder, including the killing of one human being by another, it’s unethical, and it is done without the consent of the person.
Abortion is always argued with different cases and play a main role in medical ethics (blackwell.,p291).It is evidently reasonable for some to argue that in moral situation, abortion is a murder and it should be illegal, while others may claim that abortion is woman’s right when concerning on autonomy ( The abortion debate in Australia). Opponents of making abortion legal claim that abortion is a kind of murder on extend of moral situation. It is always regarded as a sin to kill a person who is no aggressor in most moral communities (new ethics 1). Fetus is a biologically human as it is not just a part of the mothers, such as a lung or a kidney. On the contrary, it is obvious that fetus is human due to he or she has genetic code of human and human parents as well (abortion myth p5). Moreover, it has potentiality to be a person with primary moral worth (text book p210-211). As Gillion (new ethics) pointed out, every person has his right to life, especially he is not an aggressor. This point is also been pointed by (Rebecca and john,Blackwell p204), “embryos has a right to life” .The fetus is innocent and
In examining religious opinions on abortion, one must find common ground on which to form a foundation of comparison. With most of the religions to date, that common ground lies on the argument of whether or not a fetus is an actual person. Some religions protest by saying a fetus isn't a conscious being -- therefore there is no loss in doing away with it. But for those religions that do believe there is a life -- or any spiritual being -- in a fetus, it is clearly a crime to have an abortion.
Imagine, for a second, a not-so-distant future produced not by humans, but a dystopian society engineered by humanity's most amoral of computational artificial intelligence. Built without empathy by their equally emotionless robotic predecessors. Robots that make robots which make more robots, which could make more robots to divide and diversify. Robots that learn and develop based on their interactions, and robots that respond to a variety of external stimuli. Each robot has the capability to learn and store informational data. This matrix of machines uses the remains of our biological and chemical energies, humans: young, old, babies, adults and everything else that could no longer contribute to their robotic overlords, as batteries to power themselves as they systematically replace human life with their robotic and psychopathic need for efficiency. To perfection, for flesh tears and withers, but metal is eternal. But don't worry, these billions of robots have been provided with a manual of the Laws of Robotic Interactions with Humans ... to share.