[Link] First almost fully-formed human [foetus] brain grown in lab, researchers claim
This seems significant:
An almost fully-formed human brain has been grown in a lab for the first time, claim scientists from Ohio State University. The team behind the feat hope the brain could transform our understanding of neurological disease.
Though not conscious the miniature brain, which resembles that of a five-week-old foetus, could potentially be useful for scientists who want to study the progression of developmental diseases.
...
The brain, which is about the size of a pencil eraser, is engineered from adult human skin cells and is the most complete human brain model yet developed
...
Previous attempts at growing whole brains have at best achieved mini-organs that resemble those of nine-week-old foetuses, although these “cerebral organoids” were not complete and only contained certain aspects of the brain. “We have grown the entire brain from the get-go,” said Anand.
...
The ethical concerns were non-existent, said Anand. “We don’t have any sensory stimuli entering the brain. This brain is not thinking in any way.”
...
If the team’s claims prove true, the technique could revolutionise personalised medicine. “If you have an inherited disease, for example, you could give us a sample of skin cells, we could make a brain and then ask what’s going on,” said Anand.
...
For now, the team say they are focusing on using the brain for military research, to understand the effect of post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/18/first-almost-fully-formed-human-brain-grown-in-lab-researchers-claim
Hm.
So, I want to point out explicitly that in your example of ancestry, I intuitively know enough about this concept of mine to know my sister isn't my ancestor, but I don't know enough to know why not. (This isn't an objection; I just want to state it explicitly so we don't lose sight of it.)
And, OK, I do grant the legitimacy of starting with an intuitive concept and talking around it in the hopes of extracting from my own mind a clearer explicit understanding of that concept. And I'm fine with the idea of labeling that concept from the beginning of the process, just so I can be clear about when I'm referring to it, and don't confuse myself.
So, OK. I stand corrected here; there are contexts in which I'm OK with using a label even if I don't quite know what I mean by it.
That said... I'm not quite so sanguine about labeling it with words that have a rich history in my language when I'm not entirely sure that the thing(s) the word has historically referred to is in fact the concept in my head.
That is, if I've coined the word "ancestor" to refer to this fuzzy concept, and I say some things about "ancestry," and then someone comes along "this is the brute fact from which the conundrum of ancestry start" as in your example, my reaction ought to be startlement... why is this guy talking so confidently about a term I just coined?
But of course, I didn't just coin the word "ancestor." It's a perfectly common English word. So... why have I chosen that pre-existing word as a label for my fuzzy concept? At the very least, it seems I'm risking importing by reference a host of connotations that exist for that word without carefully considering whether I actually intend to mean them.
And I guess I'd ask you the same question about "conscious." Given that there's this concept you don't know much about explicitly, but feel you know things about implicitly, and about which you're trying to make your implicit knowledge explicit... how confident are you that this concept corresponds to the common English word "consciousness" (as opposed to, for example, the common English words "mind", or "soul", or "point of view," or "self-image," or "self," or not corresponding especially well to any common English word, perhaps because the history of our language around this concept is irreversibly corrupted)?