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I'll likely implode when they fire up the LHC.

Your use of 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' seems unnecessarily vague. 'Necessary' seems to be a stand in for both (a) an unarticulated moral argument and (b) an as yet unfounded empirical argument (why can't we just push for research via human cell cultures or tissue models in the appropriate...

I love lamp.

Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. It certainly helps me work within a patient's moral framework without feeling that I am getting dirty hands or that I paving my own path to the underworld. I have my own values of course (are they characterised by objective truth? No. Are they important to me...

You shouldn't use pragmatism (which is value-relative) as a cover word for anthropocentrism. If you're comfortable with a speciest utilitarian calculus, fine, but it makes me uneasy.

Yeah, I'm sure we're all speciest. However, the question of whether we ought to be is still pertinent. We have rejected plenty of social norms in the past - why not another? Of course, as a moral nihilist I'm not going to engage in a normative debate. Kill the iconophiles.

It is a sacrifice required for the future of the human race.

You're a speciest, but so are the majority who make the same argument as you.

If you remove rape, abuse, STIs, pregnancy, and social stigma then it is not so big a deal.

It always just struck me as normal logic with moral overtones.

It depends on how they treat them. I'm fine for people to have kids if they don't abuse them.

"The devil ain't lazy no siree."

A bit of both. I don't like a lot of things we do with/to animals. Take, for example, the meat industry, animal circuses, medical research, research in general, and hunting.

In a lot of cases, yes.

A relevant bit of recent literature - Uddin et al (2008) Residual functional connectivity in the split-brain revealed with resting-state functional MRI. Neuroreport The abstract reads [alas, I lack journal access]: Split-brain patients present a unique opportunity to address controversies...

Fair call, but your objection depends, in part, on the number of important corticocortical fibres running through the ant./post. commisures and the massa intermedia respectively. I haven't studied the massa intermedia, but if it only allows crossing of spinocortical or corticospinal fibres then...

You're not thinking hard enough jb nc The most relevant profession is forensic psychology which requires both registration as a psychologist and solid knowledge of the legal system. Generally a law degree is not required, but it would be incredibly advantageous. Forensic psychologists might...

P.S. Ramachandran is super cool. Anyone interested in hearing him at length should check out the 2003 BBC Reith Lecture series that he did: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/ In particular I found lecture 4 on the connections between neuroscience and aesthetics to be quite interesting.

I'm having a lazy arvo so I'm going to repost something I put up in the abortion debate thread - Technical issues regarding souls: - As Kwayera mentioned (in the abortion thread), identical twins start off as a single zygote. Do two seperate souls simply occupy the one zygote at once? Does...

Re: Why do Africans have babies when they obviously don't have the means to support t It goes both ways. In some African cultures it is the women who refuse condom use, on the grounds that they are only necessary for STI protection if the man is sleeping with other women (it thus becomes a...