chromanin

Certainly preference is real, it's a synthesis of objective physical differences in the perceiver (how your senses and brain actually perform) and assumed knowledge. The problem comes when the knowledge is left as assumed and not reviewed critically. What exists in people's minds that is not an actual part of the physical universe? For instance, I could experience a hallucination of something external to me which isn't actually there, but it still actually exists as some kind of biochemical dysfunction in my brain. Meanings are not flexible if we require them to converge on an empirical standard. When inventing new words you still are making an attempt to describe something real. I think the central problem is that instead of allowing for imperfect knowledge in some reasonable way, we actually encourage it with the invention of a subjective barrier!

I partially agree with you, the potential benefits of psychoactive drugs are tremendous. There are cognitive barriers and conditioning which are difficult to break, even for high IQ people. Then again, maybe high IQ people just need that little extra push whereas a low IQ or otherwise limited individual might not know what to make of their new experience (as described by RoseCodex above). There's also this tendency by pro-drug folks to ignore the variation in users, dose, and psychoactive mechanism. We know psychoactives can interact with some people to cause psychosis, we know many of these school shooters were influenced in some way by psychoactives (including prescribed SSRI's!). My position would be to shift the discussion towards responsible use and context. If everything is above board then we can inform people of how to safely use drugs, what drugs are safe, who shouldn't use drugs, ensure better safer drugs are available etc. On the flip side, when people are properly informed of the dangers they can be held more responsible. Maximize benefits and mitigate costs. Just leaving everyone in cognitive dissonance land and denying all the positives, I don't see how that works out well.

Indeed. Do you think it is reasonable for us to make assumptions about the preferences of the unborn? We can assume that most people would want to exist, but what about children who will certainly starve and die, or otherwise only experience suffering and death?

I'd go even further and suggest that obligations are nothing other than the deference to actual consequences, the degree to which one understands those consequences notwithstanding. Advisability & expectations must be proven accurate, logic must be performed, and so they are also 'is' as in they are real information which can be falsified. Information deserves no special category of 'ought'. This is the problem with using dictionaries in philosophy and the analytical approach in general: Unless you allow those analytical definitions to to be revised in process, prior assumed collateral knowledge will prevent you from pushing deeper into actual knowledge.

The illusion of subjectivity is a pet topic of mine, so I got a bit excited there. Fortunately you're patient I would say that either person A or B is more or less objectively wrong but doesn't realize it. How much capacity do feelings have to discern the nature of reality? Where does objective reality end and subjective begin? Ok, perhaps I did misunderstand. But then I must ask, what is the utility of suggesting a subjective barrier when we're trying to parse an objective reality? That immediately invalidates philosophy and keeps people in the dark as to their true nature. The consequences seem grave.

Another thing that shouldn't be discounted is the psychology involved. I worked in public hospitals here for many years (ahh, can't get clean! *scrub scrub*) and although they obviously do important work, they're not especially concerned with the best possible experience & quality of care. There is no profit to be obtained by being efficient, or courteous, or competitive with costs. They are not beholden to the customer, only the government. It is actually in their interests to spend every cent they get and then point to the artificial demand and say "Look, we need more money!" Oh and union hospitals are even worse, poor workers are very well protected. I don't think the child really is your property if we're going by natural law... They are a separate being, and so the choice to bring a child into the world is to accept stewardship of another human being's property rights until they develop certain faculties. Enforcement is always a problem, I don't think that tells us anything about the morality of an action. We can assume that the child would want to be treated well until they understand such things.

Thanks for the links. The first one had a nice graphic equating brain structures and areas to variations of consciousness impairment, as determined by clinical observations. So yeah it looks like the first connections to the thalamus appear @ 20 wks. but the more mature projections aren't in place until 29/30 wks. I'm not sure (I guess no one is) how much cortical involvement is really required for the most primitive beginnings of sensation awareness, so I think it's hard to justify going much past 20 wks. Here is a cool article on premature babies: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/feb/21/health.lifeandhealth The question still remains whether it is moral to destroy even a zygote, which technically contains all the genetic material to become a person. Does that initial realized potential demand deference or is it a case of no cigar? It can't be aware of its loss of future, but it is in fact losing its future. I would rather exist even if handed off to foster parents, but perhaps not if I was going to die within a couple of years from dysentery.

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. Subjectivity is an illusion, produced by relative objective differences in perceivers. For instance, we know there are more wavelengths of light out there than we can perceive with human eyes. My preference is determined by my objective composition at any given time, a subjective filter is not required to explain this. Used to be mint chocolate-chip, now it's rum & raisin. Sorry about the snarky, it gets to me when people appeal to subjectivity when the fruits of objectivity are everywhere to be gleaned. Why would you bother engaging in philosophy if reality was subjective? Even to say that some things are subjective is an objective claim, yes?

Does the sensation of pain count as consciousness? A fetus starts moving around by 8wks, so that suggests it is at least partially innervated... Are there any sensations yet or is it just reflexive electrical activity? Subjectivity is an illusion. Try again. Ignoring facts does make reality subjective.

As a probabilist I enjoy this one, lost the source sorry: The idea, the teacher said, was there was a chaos left in matter — a little bit of not-yet in everything that was — so the poets became interested in fragments, interruptions — the little bit of saying lit by the unsaid — was it a way to stay alive, a way to keep hope, leaving things unfinished? as if in completing a sentence there was a death —

It is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as 'ought'. There are only realities (is) which can be manipulated by actors to achieve different realities. The 'ought' as it is imagined, is really the supposed knowledge an actor has about how to fulfill a specific result, and so can be measured as more or less correct by the efficacy of the method in achieving said result. Values are a synthesis of preference and knowledge. Morality is a real calculation.

Careful you don't get yourself estranged from them though. You might be this kid's lifeline to sanity in the future. If her parents are not receptive to criticism, try to set a good example... Be that alternative contrast for all of them. Most people learn by imitation. There's only so much you can do, you're going to be an awesome uncle though, for sure.

Well, how far back do you go in the causal chain? I'm tempted to say that if the fetus does not yet have structures for neural activity, it is not yet a person which can be aggressed against. Then again, a zygote has a realized potential to become a person as opposed to an egg or sperm cell. Should we also consider the potential conditions of this life? I'm torn actually... What are your thoughts?

Compulsive thinking is an action as well. We have no choice but to act, until we are dead. The question becomes what types of actions are preferable and in what proportions? Since the actor is a part of this equation and all actors are objectively different, it is ideal to leave this calculation to the actor and those they cooperate with locally. The caveat to this, is that when we are able to objectively determine that a class of action invariably leads to suffering in general (the initiation of force), we should not hesitate to designate such actions as non-preferable. Cultural relativism is utter BS.

Are the differences ineradicable or insurmountable though? There is no evidence that such a static condition exists. The whole 'point' of a brain is to enable a life form to learn from its experiences and make strategic alterations within its own lifetime, which recursively alters itself and descendants. Our brains are surprisingly plastic under amenable conditions. Certainly IQ is going to be a hard limiting factor of the complexity an individual can grasp, and genetics will indeed weigh heavily on preference. To suggest though, that nothing is changing (for better OR worse) is fallacious.