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Cells are just biological automata, they are dead thing, just a bunch of robots exchanging messages, no more alive than a chair. However, when many types of cel

Cells are just biological automata, they are dead thing, just a bunch of robots exchanging messages, no more alive than a chair. However, when many types of cells come together, they form a living being. Consciousness, or life, is an emrgent property that appeared due a collection of cells working together, it's more than the sum of its parts. Where is the boundary? When do these automata become alive? We don't know, but we can be sure that monkeys and mice are alive, and they feel things. They feel pain, which is a property of the neural system. To use another analogy, let's imagine a conscious robot. It's made of various metallic things, of nuts, bolts, alloys, wires, sensors, and let's assume it feels pain. Performing stress testing on the individual bolts that make up its body (just bolts, like spare parts, from a toolbox) would not cause anything to feel pain. I really recommend watching this kurzgesagt video [1] about cells, proteins, and how they interact. [1] https://youtu.be/TYPFenJQciw https://youtu.be/TYPFenJQciw

mandmandam 4y ago
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Dalewyn 4y ago
>Consciousness, or life, is an emrgent property that appeared due a collection of cells working together, it's more than the sum of its parts. A singular cell very much is a "life". >They feel pain, which is a property of the neural system. We know for a scientific fact today that plants can detect and even respond to stimulants like "pain", just not in the same way animals with nervous systems do. Honestly, the only thing we understand about biology is that we understand almost nothing about it; and it's not for a lack of trying either. We really haven't gone beyond a very basic, distinctly human understanding of biology yet. Basing judgments of cruelty on what are obviously just human biases with no objective basis serves to benefit nothing other than some humans' need to feel good about themselves. Saying we shouldn't test on live mice because its cruel but that testing on live cells isn't cruel is hypocritical and belies the vapid nature of the argument.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Extending your argument, why then should we not test drugs and medical procedures on human beings, if there's no distinct difference from humans to rats to microbes? It's fairly obvious that if the objection to rounding up a bunch of human beings for use in sacrificial drug testing and other research is based on rights, ethics, morality,legality and so on, then why doesn't that concept of of ethical morality extend to clearly conscious animals?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Objectively I have no objections with tests on human subjects, humans are just another animal in the animal kingdom and just another living being like any other living being. The only difference, if we can call it that because it's superficial, stems from human biases where humans are "one of us" whereas other species are "not us". That's it. From an objective perspective of living being, there is no difference between humans and other species including singular cell organisms.
- GreenWatermelon 4y ago
  If someone took my severed arm, and performed medical tests on it, I won't feel pain and I wouldn't mind. I also don't mind when someone extracts a tissue from mu body for testing. it's not connected to a "whole", these tissues alone don't make life. I think our differences stem from how we charactarize individual cells.

mandmandam 4y ago

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Dalewyn 4y ago

>Consciousness, or life, is an emrgent property that appeared due a collection of cells working together, it's more than the sum of its parts. A singular cell very much is a "life". >They feel pain, which is a property of the neural system. We know for a scientific fact today that plants can detect and even respond to stimulants like "pain", just not in the same way animals with nervous systems do. Honestly, the only thing we understand about biology is that we understand almost nothing about it; and it's not for a lack of trying either. We really haven't gone beyond a very basic, distinctly human understanding of biology yet. Basing judgments of cruelty on what are obviously just human biases with no objective basis serves to benefit nothing other than some humans' need to feel good about themselves. Saying we shouldn't test on live mice because its cruel but that testing on live cells isn't cruel is hypocritical and belies the vapid nature of the argument.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Extending your argument, why then should we not test drugs and medical procedures on human beings, if there's no distinct difference from humans to rats to microbes? It's fairly obvious that if the objection to rounding up a bunch of human beings for use in sacrificial drug testing and other research is based on rights, ethics, morality,legality and so on, then why doesn't that concept of of ethical morality extend to clearly conscious animals?
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  Objectively I have no objections with tests on human subjects, humans are just another animal in the animal kingdom and just another living being like any other living being. The only difference, if we can call it that because it's superficial, stems from human biases where humans are "one of us" whereas other species are "not us". That's it. From an objective perspective of living being, there is no difference between humans and other species including singular cell organisms.
GreenWatermelon 4y ago
If someone took my severed arm, and performed medical tests on it, I won't feel pain and I wouldn't mind. I also don't mind when someone extracts a tissue from mu body for testing. it's not connected to a "whole", these tissues alone don't make life. I think our differences stem from how we charactarize individual cells.