I live, my heart cannot live? I pump blood within the body parts of my body. I am my heart, my heart's body is his body. You have a disconnected view of yourself. You are simply not there and so, you really have nothing to say, in my opinion.Fooloso4 wrote:Your heart cannot do what you do.
What if that organ happens to be the brain? I understand such organ transplants are beyond our doctors' abilities but when they eventually manage to pull that one off, what are you going to say, then? You are not your organ's except for your brain? I think therefore I am? I am Homo Sapiens the brain guy and therefore my identity lies within my brain or brain cells? You identify yourself to the managing organ because you think of yourself as a manager? This is the kind of elitist identity which I suspect of being affected by societal cancer.Fooloso4 wrote:What I am saying that my cells, taken individually as well as at the level of my organs are not me. Someone who has had an organ transplant does not become someone else.Or, you have indeed conscience but your cells don't; that to me is just another way of saying that you are not your cells.
Please explain how this does not contradicts what you've just mentioned, that your organs are not you. How can you be your cells without your organs being you?Fooloso4 wrote: Taken together, as a living, functioning whole, I am my cells.
So, only a watch in good working order is a watch? If my watch is broken or in parts, it is something else? There is no such thing as a watch in parts?Fooloso4 wrote: Analogously, a gear or a spring is not a watch and a pile of gears and springs is not a watch. It is only when all the gears and springs and other parts are organized in the right way that together they are a watch.
One of the things that can be said about bricks is that they are many things. To someone who has in mind to build a house and who sees your brick walkway, it isn't the brick walkway that he sees when looking at your brick walkway but the bricks of the house that he has in mind to build. He sees his house in in your brick walkway and so it is, at least to him.Fooloso4 wrote:If you go to the store and buy a brick you have not purchased a house. You might even buy enough bricks to make a house, but you still have not purchased a house. To build a house the bricks need to be organized in some way, but not every organization of bricks make a house. A brick walkway requires the bricks be organized but this particular organization of bricks is not a house.To say that you aren't your cells is consistent with saying that a house isn't bricks. In my opinion, it is out of touch with what I consider to be reality.
A house can be many things and often is many things. Among the other things that can make a house, certainly structure can be included. Did I ever say that only the materials alone made a house? Even individual bricks are made with structure or design.Fooloso4 wrote:Well, you can sit on a pile of bricks and call it home, but I suspect that sooner or later you will begin to organize the bricks so that you can get inside the pile and they do not fall on top of you. At that point they are no longer simply a pile of bricks but bricks that have been arranged into a structure. It is the structure and not the materials alone that make a house.A house can be nothing more than a pile of bricks. In some circumstances, that may be all you have and you'll be happy you have your house. A house can be many things.
Human beings arrange themselves don't they? I mean, you or me, when we were developing fetuses, we arranged our body parts as we grows. Quite obviously, we do not do this consciously or deliberately but we do it. If we were to deny that it is us that do this growth and arrangement in our bodies, there would be no basis in us claiming that our bodies belong to us. I understand that some of us (affected by societal cancer) reject such concept of themselves because it is all natural and cancer rejects all nature but its own.Fooloso4 wrote:There are many different organisms but all are, by definition organized. Note the two words have the same root. A pile of cells simply cannot do what an organism does. This is not just my opinion, it is a basic biological fact. If you could get people to donate cells to you or even organs and put them together in a bucket you will not end up with a human being . But unlike building a house or a watch, even if you had all the parts you needed and arranged them in the proper order you would not end up with a living human being.I would believe it's the same for an organism.
Culture is the program that makes us over ride our programming? Wow!Fooloso4 wrote:This is what culture is all about.But who are we to over ride our programming if we are biologically programmed? Aren't we then programmed to over ride our programming?
I was not making the point that an embryo immediately after fertilization was a unicellular organism. How could you think that I was making that point? I was making the point that a complete human being is a single cell at one point in his/her life. I understand that this young human being is not yet a person. You seem to reject identifying yourself with certain stages of your existence. In my opinion, societal cancer has its roots in such a view: you are out of touch with the full extent of your existence. It's as if you became a person the day that you understood and accepted capitalism?Fooloso4 wrote:It is for a brief period of time a single cell but this does not make it a unicellular. A unicellular organism remains a single cell.But then what is the embryo of a woman immediately after fertilization if it isn't both a human cell and unicellular?
Yea, right, when you give blood, your cells continue to live elsewhere whereas in an abortion, they die. Do I get this right?Fooloso4 wrote:You jumped from blood cells to embryos. Giving blood is not like having an abortion. Plenty of people who give blood are opposed to abortion.Lot's of people who oppose abortions for instance believe that there is a person in that little mass of cells called a human embryo. You obviously don't.
The word extracting can be used in a variety of ways. I do understand that with some definition of the word, it is wrong to say what I have claimed but with other definitions, I think what I have said is true and reasonable.Fooloso4 wrote:It is simply false that there is a person to be extracted from every human cell. The genetic information present in a cell is not a person. That information can be used to clone a person, but cloning is not extracting a person.In every human cell, a person can be extracted.
If something can be present in the whole of a system that is not present in any of the parts, it simply means that the whole of the system is not made of its parts. That sure sounds potentially cancerous to me.Fooloso4 wrote:Something can be present in the whole of a system that is not present in any of the parts. For example, the prevailing explanation for how anesthesia works is that it disrupts the communication between neurons. When the neurons cannot communicate we lose consciousness. Consciousness does not reside in any of the cells. It is only when there is adequate communication between them that we are conscious. In the same way, intent is not present at the cellular level. It is only when a sufficiently well-organized organism is functioning as a whole that there can be intent.How can you think that you, yourself, can have an intent without a cell in your body having that intent?
When neurons cannot communicate, neurons lose consciousness? Nice. When neurons can communicate adequately between them, they become conscious. That is just another way of re-wording the prevailing explanation for how anesthesia works. There is nothing wrong with this re-wording other than it doesn't work well anymore to support the point you were trying to make.
I see nothing in what you say that appears to contradict my contention in the opening post. All I see is a sort of confirmation that you are affected by societal cancer, a disease whose existence I claim is real and affects society as a whole, just as a neurosis can affect a person without making any individual cell in that person appear to look ill from an individual cell's own health perspective.