Posts by linger
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I don't accept a women has a greater role in democracy than a man [...but...] one foot at din[n]er time is enough
Good decision to stop there -- 'cos of course a woman's body is necessarily a "democracy" of one woman, one vote... even in a democracy, we don't all have equal stakehold in all aspects of each others' lives.
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*blush* um. yeh. that's what happens when we focus on the small things... For the record, in case it wasn't obvious already, I'm trying to avoid imposing boundaries on what should ultimately be her decision.
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I don't agree in principle with a criterion for personhood based on "good judgement", as I would like to be classed as a person regardless of who is observing or judging me. Hence my preference for an objective criterion.
I did not intend the "differentiation" criterion as any scaleable "amount of personhood", but as a precondition that is necessary (though not sufficient), because it produces (among other things) the neural network that is essential for the functions of perception and memory that serve as the main defining criterion. Any human "person" has to have undergone a certain critical amount of cell differentiation to produce this. (BTW your counterfactual seems a little skewed: surely by your argument, pregnant women would undergo more cell differentiation than other people, and thus would be measured as having more personhood than anyone else, rather than nonpregnant women being "inferior" as you suggested?)
is personhood a gradually acquired trait?
Actually, I rather think it is, apart from the "gradual" bit (I think of it more as an emergent phenomenon, which may not appear until certain abilities at a certain stage of development are combined in a certain way). As I said in my last post, perception and memory together are important because they allow learning -- which I would take as the process of developing personhood (including here Deborah's criteria of emotional responses and relationships). In taking "some capacity for perception and memory" as the minimum criterion, I am deliberately setting the bar for "personhood" rather low (there may be grounds for taking this level as showing "demonstrated potential to develop personhood" rather than "definite personhood").
Does the ability to perceive make one more of a person?
I wouldn't say that having more ability to perceive necessarily gives someone more personhood (possibly, they might be a more developed person, or a more valuable person... but those are different judgement scales!). As my answer above may suggest, it's what you do with your perceptions that counts.
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Fair enough Shep, but I'd guess those other cultures would also use other labels than the English word "baby"!
Actually, after putting all of those criteria in one place and comparing them, I may have to modify my usage description slightly, namely: "baby" may be used even before birth, at a time when birth is a realistically possible event (so: normally, and hopefully, after the point of "independent viability"). Nevertheless, the more general point stands -- the term "baby" is licensed relative to the event of birth.
In her blog post, Deborah suggests euthanasia shouldn't be exactly parallel to abortion because, unlike an early-stage foetus, a comatose (etc) individual has previously established relationships to others, and has some continued status of "personhood" by virtue of that fact. I guess the practical effect of that is that, for euthanasia, we have to presume "personhood" until we have direct negative evidence (such as some medically-defined "brain-dead" state), whereas for early-stage abortion we would normally presume "non-personhood".
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I just know someone is going to leap on this, so to clarify: it became apparent after its birth (hence I can properly use "baby" here) that its favourite song had been established by exposure before birth.
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All of the relevant points have already been made upthread, so what follows here is just a potted summary.
I still cannot accept the label "a baby" for early stages of pregnancy. Such a label displays arrogance because it assumes the user has perfect knowledge of the future. To show that such a label is inconsistent with general usage, one need only ask any parent how old their baby is. They will measure that age from birth; not from conception. Which is to say that in general use, birth (and not conception) is the reference point for the label "baby". Before birth, "a baby" -- if we were to term it such -- would have a negative age: a logical impossibility. You might call it a "proto-baby" or "pre-baby" perhaps (though then "foetus" is more exact); but not "a baby" tout court. However many times you repeat it, "a baby at conception" is a nullity.Still, moving on to personhood:
Personhood is the result of:(a) cell differentiation into many specialised types of tissue
[BTW, this is one reason why "human DNA sequence" and "living cell(s)" are insufficient to define an entity as "a human". The 3-dimensional structure of DNA in a specialised cell is different to that in an embryonic stem cell -- as it must be, because different areas of the sequence are being exposed and activated. Even for the same DNA sequence, a conceptus's DNA structure is not exactly the same as that of any cell of a newborn baby. It is possible to claim that the conceptus is, in a very exact sense, not genetically human.]
Differentiation results in an organism that is
* recognisably "human-shaped"; and (eventually)
* viable, i.e. capable of continued life independently of a host organism.
I think we can agree that appearance probably should not be used as a defining criterion.
The "independent viability" criterion is probably not central to "personhood", but is fairly important for many medical applications. (Please note that it is not simply a matter of physical "location", but also complete biological dependence.) Deborah suggests that "independent viability" makes a useful practical cutoff for moral purposes if we also lack indicators of "personhood".A far more important criterion for establishing "personhood" would be that the organism has (as a result of differentiation):
(b) a nervous system of some critical size (in terms of number of pathways), that allows it to (i) perceive its environment, and (ii) remember those perceptions.
The conceptus has, by definition, no separate nervous system, and no way of amassing conscious experience. But once condition (b) is met, there is potential for learning, and thus this marks the beginning of the development of a unique personality reflecting the interaction of genetics (some basic personality traits such as introversion/extroversion result from details of brain chemistry that are fairly clearly genetic in origin) and environment.
It is debatable exactly when the neural network develops into something functional. (We can conduct measurements of nerve responses; but it's less clear how we are to interpret those measurements as indicating "perception" or "memory".)
But it is clear that, at some time prior to birth, the nervous system has reached the critical mass allowing perception, and probably also allows some kind of memory retention. There is some evidence that foetuses already recognise the intonation patterns of their mother's voice several months before birth. (One anecdote earlier in this thread, of one baby's favourite song apparently being established before birth, is consistent with this.)
So if we're going to take (b) as some sufficient threshold for "personhood", then infanticide doesn't seem supported; but conversely, early-stage abortion is not morally prohibited.
Other worthwhile criteria for "personhood" that have been mentioned in Deborah's posts:* emotional responses (which may be seen as a way of confirming the existence of perception and memory). Deborah singles out the response of "valuing the continuance of one's own existence" as a moral touchstone; without wishing to put words in her mouth, perhaps this is equivalent to "having the potential to feel happy".
* formation of relationships with other persons. (The recognition of the mother, as already mentioned, seems to start being established before birth.)
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Grant, there is a very important difference between
"Your definition is wrong"
and
"Reasonable people, working from different starting assumptions, can have very different definitions"
You have made very strong claims, which you say are "obviously true" -- i.e., true in all possible axiomatic frameworks. I hope I have avoided making such claims; nevertheless, my axioms differ from yours, and so your "truths" are not "obvious" to me; and vice versa, I'm sure.
We will not succeed in trying to persuade each other that our axioms are "wrong". If that is your aim, the discussion must end here. If you simply want to state your axioms, then repeating them serves no further purpose. -
Linger - do you believe a baby at conception is not alive?
Do you believe a baby at conception is not human?Would you like to state your opinion if it differs from mine and support it using science?
No.
Actually, I would like to suggest that your use of the terms "human", "alive", "baby", and (in other posts) "person" and the personal pronoun "he" is unhelpful for any debate because such a framing already assumes your particular opinion is true. (Use of "he" makes other unwarranted assumptions as well, but let's ignore that.)Your questions above seem irrelevant to the argument because
(i) "a baby" does not exist in any actual sense, but only in potentiality, at conception (for many reasons that have already been pointed out by others here).
(ii) in any case, "human" or "alive" do not mean the same as "a person" or "an individual" -- which is surely what should count more when we have to start comparing competing rights of individuals.There are very different emphases involved here.
"Human" could be merely genetic or biological. If you want to take that definition, then, OK, the cell resulting from conception is genetically human. But then, so is a corpse; so that doesn't win the argument. (Which puts the focus back on defining "alive" -- for which, see others' previous posts on viruses.)The conceptus is only potentially a human (note the article, it makes a huge difference) in any other meaningful sense. As others have mentioned, it is still only *potentially* a single individual (as it can split into twins). (You responded by claiming these were "humans that could clone themselves"; but it would be just as easy to conclude that "humans cannot clone themselves, therefore this entity is not human".)
"Person" or "individual" implies some capacity for conscious thought or decision-making; "personhood" also implies some self-awareness. These qualities are difficult to quantify, and their development is (as many others here have pointed out) a long and gradual process. It seems certain, though, that these qualities are not present, at all, at conception. This is why it is possible to claim that "human life" -- in the sense that we experience it -- does not begin at this point.
Unfortunately, the concept of "rights of all individual people" is in practice often labelled as "human rights"; this is regrettably misleading, and a large part of the reason that even open, rational people tend to talk past each other is the difference in emphasis between those terms.
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[...] all I got was this T-shirt.
Maybe that could be shortened a bit.So, like a tank-top then?
Then, to abbreviate the rest of the message to fit the available space... Oh dear. I'm thinking... a tank-top of translucent material, with a message of just two letters:
"P" on one side and "C" on the other.
Must be something wrong with my medication. -
Gudday Amy!
Hey, give me a kilo of cheese, *I'd* smile.
The result might not help promote the party, though.