On 3/4/2003 4:39:51 PM, Gabe Bradley
wrote:

You raise a number of interesting
objections.

>The examples that came to my
>mind at this point were
>infants, comatose patients and
>those suffering from mental
>diseases and developmental
>disabilities. The handout
>compares one who is
>experiencing Nirvana to a
>person in a hospital bed being
>pumped with morphine.
>
>Aren't these people still
>people?

I would say that an infant, like a fetus, is
an actual human being but a potential
person, since a person is a
self-conscious rational being and infants
don't fit that criteria. A comotose patient is
also a potential person, unless they are
braindead, in which case they would not
be a person at all. I think that even
severely retarded children have a concept
of themselves and possess rationality,
just not to the degree that normal people
do, though I am not an expert on
developmental disabilites.

Many higher mammals seem to me to be
persons--non-human primates, dolphins,
parrots, and canines are the clearest
cases--they engage in means-ends
reasoning, solve problems, can be taught
language, have a social consciousness,
and so on.

>About desire: When I was a
>kid, I desired to throw
>things. As I grew older,
>through training, I have
>advanced beyond that desire. I
>conceptualize being desireless
>as extending my attitudes
>towards throwing things to all
>facets of my existence.

That desire didn't simply go away, it was
replaced by new desires. What would it
be like to have no desires whatsover?
Let's suppose you are in this state in this
lifetime. It seems then we might be able
to remove all the parts of your brain
having to do with thinking, learning,
understanding, communicating and so
on, along with any motor skills, and just
retain the parts which receive pleasure,
and we would be doing no harm to you.
But in this "lobotomized" form, having lost
the capacity to think, reflect conceptualize,
communicate, create and so on, are you
still a person, or are you a blissed out
zombie or vegetable?

Prof. Borrowdale
borrowdalej@lanecc.edu