When do Humans start Existing?

reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch


so is self awareness what makes you human?

if you become un-selfaware, through car accident or brain damadge are you still human?

i also believe there are certain animals that are self aware, like elephants, what about them?

is it ok to kill a child not yet self aware...up until 18 months?

...just thoughts


[edit on 30-9-2007 by TheRepublic]

Originally posted by whirlwind

Originally posted by Kolosowski
John the baptist and Jesus are part of the same entity yet are separate and on there own individual journeys yet still connected, they were aware of this connection!

I don't understand....please explain..........Whirlwind

The Entity (soul in a simplistic term that you might refer to it has, and for my sake and yours ill refer to it has such) of Jesus was far to big? powerful to be put into one human, and as such it was divided into three humans one being John the Baptist. They still were individuals and led individual lives physically yet were part of the same entity. They understood this connection!

Originally posted by TheRepublic
reply to post by Thain Esh Kelch

 

so is self awareness what makes you human?

if you become un-selfaware, through car accident or brain damadge are you still human?

i also believe there are certain animals that are self aware, like elephants, what about them?

is it ok to kill a child not yet self aware...up until 18 months?

...just thoughts


[edit on 30-9-2007 by TheRepublic]

Its an interesting point you have made, yet everything has an awareness of its self, yet not in the basic terms you would use. Everything is self aware of its position and its self and animals have most likely have more "self awareness then us, despite that they might not recognize them selfs in front of a mirror! They understand who they are, the values of which they are living in and the true nature of reality,As we have developed so did our egos and we have separated from this earth instead of working with it! sorry for the move off topic i sometimes do that!

Kolosowski

I disagree with the term self aware. They are able to recognize that there is something interesting in the mirror. That being said, a child actually becomes self aware in week 1.

"Week 1-4 5-7 days after fertilization, the blastula attaches to the wall of the uterus (endometrium). When it comes into contact with the endometrium it performs implantation. Implantation connections between the mother and the embryo will begin to form, including the umbilical cord. The embryo's growth centers around an axis, which will become the spine and spinal cord."


"Animal zygotes undergo mitotic cell divisions to become an embryo"

If and when the genes are added, then a truly new person appears, just without experience. thus, if they are going strictly out of instinct, which would be to grow and develop.

Here is the definition of instinct:

"Instinct is the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior. Instincts are unlearned, inherited fixed action patterns of responses or reactions to certain kinds of stimuli. Innate emotions, which can be expressed in more flexible ways and learned patterns of responses, not instincts, form a basis for majority of responses to external stimuli in evolutionary higher species, while in case of highest evolved species both of them are overridden by actions based on cognitive processes with more or less intelligence and creativity or even trans-intellectual intuition.

Examples of instinctual fixed action patterns can be observed in the behavior of animals, which perform various activities (sometimes complex) that are not based upon prior experience and do not depend on emotion or learning, such as reproduction, and feeding among insects. Other examples include animal fighting, animal courtship behavior, internal escape functions, and building of nests.

Instinctual actions - in contrast to actions based on learning which is served by memory and which provides individually stored successful reactions built upon experience - have no learning curve, they are hard-wired and ready to use without learning, but do depend on maturational processes to appear."

With all this being said, the moment the egg and sperm meet, an organism is formed, whether you want to classify it as human, or pre-human has yet to be established, but it is non-the-less and organism.

Regards,
Camain

And when along the path of evolution (to bring the topic into the subject of the forum), did Humans cease to be Animals?

The answer is of course that there isn't a precise moment.
There wasn't some moment when Souls started to be allocated to sufficiently evolved humans. (Though Scientologists might disagree)
And there isn't an angel sitting there waiting for a child to be sufficiently developed to accept a Soul.

Humanity, consciousness, life and death aren't as precise things as we would like them to be for decisions on Morality.