The heart pumps blood. The heart does not generate thoughts or feelings.

An embryo has no cerebral cortex. A fetus has a cerebral cortex beginning *at the earliest* at the twentieth week, and probably a shade later.

Having a brain and having thoughts and feelings are two different things.

A brain-dead person is not a person. (Of course, someone may be *thought to be* brain-dead without actually being brain-dead. But an actually brain-dead person is not a person. He has no consciousness. He has no thoughts or feelings. He has no mentality. There is "no one home.")

The heart do not JUST pumps blood!

Why considering the heart you are so realistic but not for the brain? I mean, what is "thought and feelings" for science?! Chemical reactions? So brain JUST make chemical reactions!

Embryo is a Greek word which means fetus in English. Fetal nervous system appears and start developing in the first month of human's life.

Dead is a person with a stopped heart not with a stopped brain. Brain-dead person is still a person. Maybe it is not in your's country law system, but at list, your claim is something not accepted in general.

If life stops when heart stops, then I consider that life starts at least when that heart begins to pump!

There are brain-dead person who came back.

There is a difference between being thought to be brain-dead and actually being brain-dead. Someone may mistakenly be thought to be brain-dead when he isn't. But if he is really brain-dead, I see no reason to think that his consciousness continues, as consciousness seems to arise from and depend on brain function.

Generally speaking, life stops when the heart stops beating, but only because then the brain and the rest of the body also die. If you could preserve a working brain after the heart stopped beating, then you could still have a thinking, feeling being.

You're right, the brain's activity does just consist of electrochemical reactions, and I have no idea how conscious awareness springs from that. Nevertheless, it seems clear that consciousness arises from brain activity, not from the activity of the heart. (When someone gets a heart transplant, he does not become a new person with completely different thoughts and feelings, does he? No. He's the same person--he just has a new blood-pump. Try that with a brain transplant and see if you still have the same person.)

Unfortunately "mistakes" like that costs human lifes. So we have to be ABSOLUTELY sure that the human is dead before we interfere in his body either in "brain-dead" persons or embryos with a non perfect brain-nervous system.

It is not enough if it "seems" to you or any other that "there is noone there"! We must be ABSOLUTELY sure that the human is dead or that we have no human. It is not acceptable that you just dont considere this as a person. Some decades before in your country many didnt accept that africans are completly humans!

I like your statement "consciousness seems to arise from and depend on brain function". For the orthodoxs "seems" different things! Consciousness ofcourse has to do with brain, but not brain alone.

As heart is not just a blood pumb, brain is not a chemical reactor.

You said :"If you could preserve a working brain after the heart stopped beating, then you could still have a thinking, feeling being." and "When someone gets a heart transplant, he does not become a new person with completely different thoughts and feelings, does he? No. He's the same person--he just has a new blood-pump. Try that with a brain transplant and see if you still have the same person."

1) Is that possible? If not I dont understand we have to talk about that.

2) You mean that a brain is the human?

I dont claim that the heart is the human. Human is soul and flesh.The soul surrounds body. We dont have human without body. When the body is dead the same time, human is dead but the excact time of conseption we have both, body, soul and human.

We have an ancient tradition of "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Prayer"

We can find that practise both as "Prayer of the Heart" and ""Mentally" Prayer" (νοερά προσευχή).

This tradition is a great art and I am not very familiar, I am just a low class student. But as I see, human is a whole, not an organ apart. Brain and thoughts come "down" to the heart and becomes feelings and then to the whole body. Brain, heart, body in general opens the eyes of the soul and comunicate the Uncreated Energies of God.

http://www.oodegr.co/oode/biblia/pateriki_theologia/12.htm

Yes, human beings are organic wholes; but a person can have an arm amputated and still be the same person, with the same memories and the same ways of thinking and feeling. He can have a leg amputated. He can have his appendix removed. He can even have a heart transplant and still be himself. But removing the brain--or even irreversibly damaging just the reticular activating system (RAS)--will put an end to him. He will no longer be a thinking, feeling being. He will then just be a body devoid of thought and devoid of feeling. He will then just be an empty shell.

I disagree with you.

We have people who came back from "brain-dead" situations and told us that they had bouth thoughts and feelings.

A person is never an empty shell until the soul leaves the body.

Maybe a brain-transplanted person lose his memories but feelings has nothing to do with that. Feelings has to do with your choice of the way you accept your life circumstances. These circumstances ofcourse affect you and change you and your life. But who will claim that after an accidend that cost his genitals, he will be the "same person"?! We are always changing and still the same person from the exact moment of conception. We have a beginning without end and we are changing for ever, on the contrary of God that never change becouse he is perfect, we are changing in likeness of Him.

I understand your commitment to Descartes and "Cogito ergo sum" but I have differend tradition. For the orthodoxs a human person is a whole, body and soul, and not an organ, regardless how importand an organ may be for the whole life of the body we see it in a comunion.

Feelings are generated by the brain. See here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/brain/episode4/

Or here: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/5-ways-your-brain-influences-your-emotions.htm

Or any number of other sources about how the brain generates and encodes feelings. (This is not surprising, since we know that the brain is the seat of consciousness. Not the heart.)

I don't think any brain-dead person has ever been brought back to life, for the simple reason that when the brain is dead, it's dead, and you can't be conscious without a functioning brain. However, there may have been an occasional individual who was mistakenly thought to be brain-dead--so that the doctors said, "He's brain-dead," by mistake--but was revived. There may also be false stories circulating of such events.

When doctors say something you like, I have to accept it. When they say something you dont like, they just make mistakes!

Anyway, I dont see this conversation lead anywhere. Maybe its a lack of language by my side. We have sensations, feelings and emotions. We have thoughts, intellect and will. All very subtle concepts in our "mother"language, even more difficult in other.

In general, I havent seen any arguments to convince me to kill a little human being, or a human with brain problem.

Embryo is an evoluting human and the only reason to kill it is if its going to kill its mother. Its a very difficult choise that the mother and only has to make. But never without a reason of life or death. The embryo is neither appendicitis nor tonsils, its a little human.

https://www.facebook.com/PreciousLife.Ireland/photos/a.670888309590969.1073741848.145061058840366/1003277529685377/?type=1&theater

Twenty-four weeks is a little on the late side by the cerebral cortex criterion.

But we must understand that *looking* human doesn't make an object a thinking, feeling being or confer upon it moral rights.

Ofcourse it does not.

We have many historical personalities that proves your claim.

But that doesnt give us any right to kill them!

The tiniest survivor: How the 'miracle' baby born two weeks before the legal abortion limit clung to life against all odds

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1021034/The-tiniest-survivor-How-miracle-baby-born-weeks-legal-abortion-limit-clung-life-odds.html

www.oddee.com/item_98601.aspx

Η Amillia Taylor γεννήθηκε πρόωρα,μόλις 21 εβδομάδων– 2 εβδομάδες νωρίτερα από το νόμιμο όριο για έκτρωση στην Αμερική.

Στη Φλόριντα, υπάρχει νομικό πλαίσιο για τα νοσοκομεία, το οποίο δίνει το δικαίωμα στους γιατρούς να αρνηθούν να «επαναφέρουν» ένα μωρό εάν είναι μικρότερο από 24 εβδομάδων.

http://babyradio.gr/o-theos-iche-diaforetiki-gnomi/

EXCLUSIVE: Revealed, the terminally ill man set to be first to undergo the world's first full HEAD transplant pioneered by doctor branded 'nuts'

• Valery Spiridonov says he is ready to put his trust in Dr Sergio Canavero
• 30-year-old computer scientist was born with Werdnig-Hoffman disease
• Genetic muscle-wasting disorder has left him seriously disabled since birth
• New body of city of Vladimir native would be taken from braindead donor
• But 2016 target for operation is 'pure fantasy', say Dr Canavero's critics

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3029376/Russian-volunteer-head-transplant-operation-Valery-Spiridonov-says-no-choice-undergo-7-5million-procedure-controversial-Italian-surgeon-Dr-Sergio-Canavero.html

Πρωτοφανής φρίκη. Απίστευτο πείραμα που ξεπερνά την ηθική. Άνθρωπος θα υποβληθεί σε ολική μεταμόσχευση… κεφαλιού

www.freepen.gr/2015/04/blog-post_601.html

I find it difficult to believe that such a transplant is feasible yet.

On the other hand, the poor fellow doesn't seem to have a lot of other options, does he?

I do not know, I am not a doctor. In the other hand, a free man always has a choise!

I post it just becouse when I saw this article I immediately thought of you and our conversation!..

‘This baby won’t stop breathing!’: Abortionist strangled baby born alive while nurses stood and watched

www.lifesitenews.com/news/this-baby-wont-stop-breathing-abortionist-strangled-baby-born-alive-while-n

OK. So, now, was that "baby" the right sort of being to be thought of as having the right to life? *That* is the question. No amount of emotional crying out will take the place of hard thought about that question.

The Greek Sophia (ΣΟΦΙΑ) is translated wisdom in English.

I agree with your comment.