Re: If life is a benefit...

On Mon, 01 Dec 2003 22:14:07 GMT, "Craig Franck" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
>
>> If life is a benefit, then it's logically certain that
>> no life [ie never existing at all] is a loss.
>
>This is only true if a creature could somehow be considered
>to exist separately from its life. For theological reasons, some
>Christians believe that all souls were created by God prior to
>Man's Fall.
>
>If you associate being with a creature's life, it doesn't make
>sense to think of some unearthly realm of "souls" waiting to
>get born, 

    How could we possibly know that?

>some being fortunate to be born as humans living in a
>nice country, 

    AGREED!!! And as a human living in a nice country, in a
nice age, with all the incredibly nice things that have been
around for only a tiny fraction of the time that humans have
been on this planet.

>some unlucky to be born otherwise (As a child,
>someone told me once I was lucky not to be born as a lab rat;

    Or a tape worm living in a lab rat involved with tape worm
poison research....or a..........................................................

>it seemed an odd thing to say, and I was in my teens before I
>could say exactly why.)

    In some ways odd and in some ways not. The pairing of
sperm and that created your body may or may not be the
determing factor as to exactly who you/I/we are. We are
all I to ourselves. We are all we to we. But no one is you.
So from that aspect we get back to the possibility or not
of being able to exist as an individual without this body
we occupy at this time. 

>But if you don't exist prior to being born, then you can't suffer
>a loss. I don't consider this a trivial question since there is the
>issue of abortion. Does an aborted fetus lose something? 

    Sure, they lose their life. A dead aborted fetus loses 
nothing, but a live one does.

>Is
>existing better than not? 

    Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. You know that.

>If your quality of life is horrendous,
>do you gain something by dying?

    Yes, imo.

>These are all valid questions, and in the case of a fetus, which
>would in all likelihood be born if not interfered with, you could
>argue it was indeed a loss, if you consider living better than
>not. 

    Depending on the life. And then quality of life changes for all
of us...sadly the only guarantee is that it's all going to crap at
some point. If we're lucky it won't be until the end of our lives,
but then for some beings they never have a good day, and all
variations in between.

>However, if it's ethical to terminate brain-dead people, it
>could be okay to terminate babies without the development
>to be conscious.

    In some cities I've heard there are more abortions than births,
so there is a lot more to consider. 

>But from a strictly philosophical view, the idea that X is of value,
>therefore not X is a loss, doesn't hold. Not X could just be
>neutral. 

    Thank you.

>That wealth and fame don't always make for a high
>quality of life is all too often proven to be the case. All you do is
>trade one set of problems in for another, 

    I'll bet that's true, but I would kinda' like to try the wealth
problems out for a while before I die.

>so it's best to just try
>and make the best of what you've got.

    My point is that some farm animals benefit from farming and
that some do not. One plus they have in regards to what you
pointed out, is that they don't know what they're missing. They
do make the best of what they've got, but unless there are 
things in their lives to make them miserable, the plus of not being
bothered by what they know they're missing is something that
we don't have. They also don't know they are going to die, as
we know we are.