Good point.

Well, in a materialist universe with a civilization that has a good enough understanding of the humanoid brain and mind (which we can presume Star Trek should have, even if what we see on screen doesn't always represent that but it can't help having been written in the 60s and 90s/early 00s instead of the 24th century), it should be provable whether or not disintegration in the transporter causes [a conscious experience of] horrific pain.

That can be read blithely, I suppose -- though B16 is not someone to be read blithely.

For me, as a believer, this was one of my "aha" moments. It ties together a number of Christian concepts and doctrines that always tended to wash over me without much impact or understanding, such as John's seemingly sentimental testimony that "God is Love" and the always difficult concept of the Trinity. The point being that love implies relationship, i.e., the lover and the beloved and the connection that exists between them. So when John tells us that God is Love, he is making a strongly Trinitarian statement. God is -- in short -- a community of persons, and the relationship of each to the other is ingredient to who and what God is. And from that we begin to understand that the God who is Love necessarily "creates" out of and for love, and thus it should not be surprising for us to think that we in turn are created for love, i.e., for relationship.

I admit this was a striking thing for me to confront from the perspective of an American. Our American impulse and cultural credo -- at least historically -- places such a premium on individual responsibility, individual freedom and self-realization, and even our approaches to relationship are often viewed or evaluated within the perspective of our own self-realization and wish-fulfillment.

The stunning reality is that we are created and wired for self-abandoning relationship -- relationship to our Creator, and relationship to each other. That is a radically different perspective, for believers and non-believers alike. It is not the Borg, because it is not annihilative -- the 3 persons of the Trinity retain their distinct "personhood" and dignity, and each soul retains their distinct personhood and dignity, because that is the nature of love, i.e., a relationship between distinct persons.

Pax,
50

Umm, don't we have a context and an issue?

Depends on the context and the issue.

So you hold your position in a more inarticulate, intuitive way? People do hold a lot of positions that way, but my sense is that SN is a place to be increasingly articulate.

I don't either on any metaphysical view.

Oh, on my own metaphysic I suspect there is the brightest of lines. But I'm trying to operate on your metaphysic. And I see no way to robustly generate a bright line when I do so.

I get it you see it as a spectrum I see a bright line of distinction. So what?

Oh no I don't think my current thinking is independent. I just don't think it is being directly influenced by other minds. Like two rivers flowing down a slope. There is a clear distinction between two that join compared to two that never interact. Neither have pure independence but there is still a tremendous difference.

Ok, so then we just need to talk about Borg where the communication can take months or years to reach groups of drones, such that they need to maintain considerable internal state and appear autonomous. That doesn't seem to be a very big change.

I still say it is categorically different to join a club than to be assimilated into the Borgs.

You seem to be straying from:

LB: Without (II), or at least without agent causation, the only real difference I see between the Borg and a social club is that the Borg is your dominant social club, it overrules all other social clubs.

Perhaps it would be better to think about moving to a different country and adapting to its culture. That is probably a better way to think of membership in the RCC as they want you to think of it BTW.