Being a Person:
Why Personhood is Not Enough

Franklin,

I'm wondering if your emphasis on the ability to exercise certain functions doesn't run into the same problems. For instance, if someone is a fetus, an infant, profoundly mentally retarded or hopelessly comatose, they would still lack the ability to perform most functions necessary to maintain a degree of autonomous functioning. An infant lacks the ability to feed itself, protect itself from the elements &c. and relies on its mother/father to provide these functions for it. Maybe another term would work better; perhaps 'potential' (at which point further arguments can be made about former potential, lost potential etc.) to function. It's a slight distinction, but an important one. Though that might not be the direction in which you want to head. An interesting post, both by Joe C and Franklin.

I don't have much time for philosophy, although I think it's probably a wonderful way to pass the time if one has nothing better to do. I am particularly impressed by the dense prose that emanates from the fevered imagination swamps of the philosophical netherlands.

I suppose I might have more sympathy for this particular argument if I ever read:

"I might not be a person, and my friends might not be persons. Other people, the people who make useful things like shovels, air conditioners, and tires are probably persons. The people who carry my garbage away are probably persons. Incarcerated felons that we have locked away and romantically fantasize about are probably persons, too. Retarded people with beautiful smiles are likely persons. But I am probably not a person. Beyond arranging characters and words in patterns that make more or less sense to my small circle of friends, I have done nothing of note. If I had, some person, somewhere, would have noted it. The books on my shelf that I admire so greatly with my name on the spine, and the piles of reprints of my articles in the corners of my office are interesting to me - and some of my friends - but they are really nothing. They have never helped another person cross a river, call their parents on a holiday, or feed another inhabitant of this planet. My life has been largely worthless and parasitic, and my respiration and consumption does nothing but contribute to global warming. I am abjectly grateful for the kindness of persons that allow me to fritter away my days arranging symbols. I have enjoyed this pointless activity since I have been able to color within the lines with a crayon made by a person on a page made by a person. Thank you for this gift, as well as key rings, the barf bags in the pocket of airplane seats, and the nails that hold my bookshelves together.

What I read, instead, is:

Some people are persons, and others are not. I, of course, am an uber-person. I am qualified not only as a person, but also to define who is a person and who is not. I demand that my personhood be respected, and that my uber-personhood be obeyed. I demand that organizations of persons with weapons be employed to enforce the rules my uber-personhood gives me the right and duty to impose. Should I - yes, I - find that you are not a person, I have the power to decide whether you deserve to live or be deleted from the planet.

Joe -

You might be interested to note how the "human being" argument is being circumvented. Since the ESCR bill was vetoed, I have noted at least 3 newspaper articles claiming that embryonic stem cells come from "leftover clumps of cells". Voila, no more human being, just icky tissue. I'm sure you can google the news sites and see this phrase being picked up.

so killing is killing then, so what is collatoral damage? is killing by accident really killing?

Whether dealing with ability or potential, we are in both cases changing the discussion from Essence to Functionality. Should the argument reamin with the principle of Being Human then the principle is sound.

Discussions founded in Functionality, including the definitions of Personhood, define Human as only a biological mechanism. It is here that we remove that Essence with is the heart of Being Human. Those arguments are secular and materialistic, often utilitarian, and, as is evident in every debate I've seen and read, devoid of morality.

Collin

http://evangelicalperspective.blogspot.com

Rights—whether positive (those that impose an obligation on others) or negative (those that oblige others to refrain from certain activities)—should be assigned based on the ability to respond as moral beings. For example, a Belgian Sheepdog has no moral accountability and thus no moral obligations to me as a person. If he eats my hamster I can't fault him for not respecting my right to private property. But since I am morally accountable I have an obligation not to cruelly torture and kill the dog for eating my pet rodent.

Why? If the dog is a 'nonperson' then why is killing it for eating your hamster any different than, say, throwing away a defective cage that accidently killed your hamster? Likewise if we see a sheepdog with its bones broken because a rock had fallen off a mountain and landed on it we would feel pity and sorry for the dog even though we were not morally responsible for creating its plight. On the flip side if we see a rock that broke in half after falling down a mountain and hitting the ground we would feel no pity for the rock and no emotion at all except maybe relief that a 'nonperson' sheepdog wasn't under it when it landed!

This leads me to suspect these philosophers are not really using the ability to respond as moral beigns as their definition of personhood but the ability of the beign to think and interact with the living world. A dog can do this but a rock cannot.

Most reasonable people, though, would be horrified by following it to is logically consistent outcomes. Joseph Fletcher, for example, believed that humans with an IQ below 40 might not be persons and that below 20 they are definitely not persons. Bioethicist H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. says that “fetuses, infants, the profoundly mentally retarded, and the hopelessly comatose” all fall into the category of “nonpersons.” Peter Singer believes that since patients with Alzheimer’s and infants up to the age of 24 months are not persons, it is not wrong to kill them. Not surprisingly, when you allow intellectuals to define personhood, they will attempt to establish a criterion based on intellect, reason, and consciousness.

To a degree we all accept following this. A court, for example, may void a contract signed by someone with a 40 IQ because it will rule that such a person could not understand the nature of the contract hence could not give true consent (likewise those with severe mental problems can be ruled unable to manage their affairs and a guardian will be empowered to decide for them).

However it is not necessary for logical consistency to hold that all rights must be continuous rather than discrete. What do I mean? Well someone with an IQ of 20 may not be able to make any decisions for themselves while someone with an IQ of 40 may make some decisions and have others subject to approval of a guardian. Or to use another example, look at children. There are many decisions they cannot make for themselves without their gaurdian approving but in some areas they are treated as full adults such as when they commit certain crimes and are tried as adults.

That is an example of rights that are continuous. The person is more entitled to them as he or she is shown to be more able to manage them.

Other rights, though, are discrete. Once you get them they are yours and they neither increase or decrease. For example, you get the right to vote at age 18 but at the age of 36 you don't get two votes and four votes at age 72. My right to vote is equal to someone who is half as smart as I am as well as equal to someone who is twice as smart.

In regards to the most important rights such as the right not to be killed without due process it is no less logical to set the bar very low and to make the right discrete. Hence an infant of 12 months has it even though he won't have the right to vote, so does the late stage Alzheimer's patient even though she doesn't have a right to manage her own bank account.

A person sleeping, even very deeply, probably is thinking on some level and can even interact with the world. Even in a deep coma we cannot rule out that some marginal activity is going on. At the very least the brain appears to be able to store and retain many memories even in the deepest of comas because when people come out of them they typically remember who they are, who their family is etc. Even in serious cases of amnesia the person still often remembers at least their spoken language and other facts. If retaining memory is part of thinking then sorry Joe even the deepest sleep or coma would still retain personhood for the subject.

The reason why it is wrong to kill philosophy professors in their sleep is the same reason it is wrong to destroy embryos: moral people do not kill innocent human beings. Not all persons are human beings. And it may even be the case that not all human beings are persons. But all human beings—whether persons or non-persons--are human beings. This is a scientifically and ontologically verifiable fact.

So why is it wrong of me to torture and kill that dog while smashing a rock that I tripped on is no big deal morally?

Let's assume that you are right. If so, then this makes the rationalization seem even more arbitrary and flawed. Why should a brute biological fact about "ability" matter when it comes to establishing moral worth? That just reeks of a desperation for as others have already pointed out, you don't truly have the ability when you are asleep. What you have is a physical structure. But so do fetuses, infants, and the comatose.
Joe, you do realize your beef with the 'ability' type of definition is that it would leave the sleeping, the comatose, and infants with no protection. Now you state with this clarrification about physical structure that these nice people will now be as protected as a moral philsopher or blogger?

Michael:
Re: Post #15
It is not clear that the OT merely levies a fine for
causing a miscarriage following a violent struggle. The
Hebrew text actually reads something like, "if the child comes out." Many interpreters do take that to mean an accidental miscarriage but it is not the only possible construction. It is hermeneutically permissible to read that passage as referring to the precipitating of a premature birth and the fine would therefore be assessed to assist the parents who might not yet have been financially prepared.
Since either interpretation is plausible, and since the miscarriage/premature birth was the unintended result of a struggle and not a deliberate procedure,this passage cannot alone determine the Biblical perspective toward abortion.

If the miscarriage/premature birth were not the result of a direct assault on the woman or an attempt to make the baby die, then it is not murder.

I see murder as a deliberate killing of another with malice. It doesn't apply to accidental, self-defense or wartime killing.

A question: if a human with a severe case of mental retardation is not a person entitled to life, is a person with a 200 IQ then a super-human entitled to lots of extra perks?

Why can a baby in the womb at week 38 be aborted although it could survive outside the womb just because the mother decides to have a partial birth abortion but once the baby is out of the womb at 40 or so weeks, it can no longer be killed? How can we fight successfully to keep babies alive that are born even earlier in one case but abort them in another? Who is qualified to judge when life begins? If we cannot know then why don't we err on the side of caution?

This post proves the point. Without revealed religion from God himself, mankind is left with unanswerable questions, moral and otherwise. Even the highest intelligence cannot satisfy amyone on his opinion, even himself, he is lost. Jesus came to seek and save the lost, he is worth a listen.

I was tempted to respond to the basic argument, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I find this passage contains a lot of confusions; I have to say, Joe, that this is not one of your better efforts. All I can think to do is point out some problems as we go:

While [slaves, women, etc.] were typically considered to be human they were not afforded the rights that are imbued by personhood. The judgment of later generations, however, has without exception concluded that denying personhood to these members of the human family is a great moral evil.

It certainly is, but not because they are "members of the human family". There's a reason why it's wrong to ignore their moral standing, but it requires explaining why they have moral standing. As you already noted, it's not synonymous with being human.

Yet while recognition of personhood is necessary for a human to be granted certain positive rights, I contend that it is not required for a basic negative right – the right not to be deprived of life without due process of the law. In other words, people don’t have a right to kill you simply because they don’t want to concede that you are a person.

I think this section is very muddled. The distinction between positive and negative rights has nothing to do with personhood - those are two different issues. Being a person does not by itself give you positive rights (that is to say, the reason persons have positive rights - if they do - is not that they are persons but something else). It's very hard to talk of non-persons having any kind of rights - positive or negative; "personhood" is understood to be membership in the category of beings qualified to have rights in the first place. (There may be good reason not to harm things that are not persons - such as a painting - but it is not that they have "rights".)

Rights—whether positive (those that impose an obligation on others) or negative (those that oblige others to refrain from certain activities)—should be assigned based on the ability to respond as moral beings.

Most would say "the capacity to experience moral goods or harms". Being able to respond in some morally-determined fashion would set the bar higher than even your nemeses Engelhardt or Singer would like (it requires more mental capacity to understand and act on moral concerns than it does merely to be able to experience morally-significant events). But otherwise this is OK as far as it goes . . .

For example, a Belgian Sheepdog has no moral accountability and thus no moral obligations to me as a person. . . . But since I am morally accountable I have an obligation not to cruelly torture and kill the dog for eating my pet rodent.

. . . which turns out to be only as far as the next sentence. Nothing in the scenario above turns on the dog responding to you "as a moral being". And indeed, by that criterion it wouldn't be wrong to kill your dog, because it can't "respond as a moral being" to other moral beings. But the dog may be subject to experiencing (basic) goods and harms. Your obligation is not to hurt the dog by exposing it to harm; it is not to respect the dog's capacity to respond as a moral being (which it doesn't have). (And in fact many people would argue that the dog really doesn't have very significant moral interests anyway [it's only a dog, after all]; that's why it's acceptable to put dogs down at the dog pound if they aren't adopted.)

If, by "respond as a moral being" you mean the person acting has that capacity (such that you can't harm your dog, not because the dog is a person, but because you are a person and thus have moral oblgations), this is even worse. It offers no way of determining what you have obligations to. Why can't you beat a dog, but (presumably) can hit a stick of firewood or a punching bag? You are the same moral person, with the same "ability to respond" in each case. The answer has to be that there is something about the object of your action that grants it moral claims against you. You have to decide whether the subject - a dog, a fetus, a stick of firewood - is a moral person - which is just what personhood theory tells us.

Likewise, human beings at the earliest stages of development have not developed the moral accountability to be assigned positive rights.

Again, it's not a question of moral "accountability" - moral persons may themselves have morally significant interests, without having the ability to understand or act on the moral interests of other people. The former requires vastly less mental wherewithal than the latter. Most people would argue that our obligation is to give moral credence to anyone who has morally-significant experiences - not merely to anyone who is in a position to harm us back.

For the sake of argument, let us concede that certain humans are not persons, just as certain persons are not humans.

OK.

This means that a human being can be a non-person but that a person (at least a human person) must also be a human being.

Obviously a human person must be a human being. You don't need any of the preceding material to establish that. It's tautological.

No one argues that there are a classes of human persons that are not also human beings.

Again, because it's a tautology - not because it carries any moral significance.

Being a human being is, therefore, essential to being a human person.

Alright, already . . .

This leads to a peculiar insight.

No, it doesn't . . . but carry on.

We can kill non-person human beings (e.g., the embryo). We can also kill human persons that are also human beings. But we cannot kill the human person without killing the human being.

You've already admitted that there are human non-persons. So, all that is required to kill a human person (while their "being" remains alive) is to do whatever it takes to make a living human person a living human non-person. This is precisely the insight behind the widely-accepted notion of "brain death". If the mental functions have been entirely disrupted or eliminated (and possibly even at some lesser level of damage, though defining it is controversial), the biological entity can certainly no longer meet the criteria for personhood - they can no longer experience moral goods (and certainly not "respond as a moral being"). So it is reasonable to say the "person" has died, while their former body remains alive. Denying this requires stipulating that a person must have a body in order to be a person, which you have already agreed is not the case. (Non-humans can be persons, so a human body is not required. Androids can be persons, so a biological body is not required. Human persons happen to exist in biological bodies, but the body is not part of the definition of their personhood.)

In fact, you cannot kill any type of person unless it is already a living biological being.

You have already (implicitly) admitted that there can be such persons: intelligent computers or androids. It's a commonplace of theorizing about personhood that such a capacity does not necessarily require human status, or even being biologically alive. But this point does not matter all that much anyway.

The Spanish may be able to kill Great Apes but lawyers cannot kill a corporation. What is being killed is not the person but the being.

The "corporate person" analogy is not a good one. That's largely a term of art, not a literal description. ("Corporate persons" are also known as "fictional persons", for a good reason.) Corporations are not regarded as moral persons - a corporate person is merely something that can be treated in court in some of the same ways a real person can (it can sue or be sued).

As for killing "the person, not the being", it's obvious that when you kill a biological person you are doing both at once. As noted above, being a person does not require having any particular type of body, nor even necessarily a biological body. And the person can die [brain death] before the body does. For biological beings, when you kill the body you also kill the person, but that does not mean the two actions are synonymous. (If you physically destroy a hard drive, you also destroy the data on it, but you can destroy the data without destroying the drive, and it is possible to instantiate the same data on various platforms. Destroying the drive is not the same as destroying the data, even if one leads to the other.)

This distinction is important because those who argue that it is acceptable to kill non-person humans base their rationale on the claim that what matters is not the being (the living biological organism) but the personhood (a set of functional criteria such as consciousness or rationality). This view has become the dominant view in bioethics.

Yes to all the above (except "This distinction is important" - it isn't).

Most reasonable people, though, would be horrified by following it to is logically consistent outcomes.

I don't think so, but at any rate what you conclude below is not the logical outcome of the above beliefs.

Joseph Fletcher, for example, believed that humans with an IQ below 40 might not be persons and that below 20 they are definitely not persons. Bioethicist H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. says that “fetuses, infants, the profoundly mentally retarded, and the hopelessly comatose” all fall into the category of “nonpersons.” Peter Singer believes that since patients with Alzheimer’s and infants up to the age of 24 months are not persons, it is not wrong to kill them.

Each of their views, especially Singer's, is more nuanced than that, but that's roughly correct. And you're right, something like this follows directly from a functional definition of personhood - the definition, incidentally, which you accept by agreeing that personhood depends upon a mental capacity and not mere species membership.

Not surprisingly, when you allow intellectuals to define personhood, they will attempt to establish a criterion based on intellect, reason, and consciousness.

You seem to think "intellect" is some arbitrary quality. In fact, it's both the function by which we tell truth from falsity, and by which we engage others in the moral community. You would do better, here, to say "When you allow rational people to identify criteria for personhood, they settle upon ones necessary for self-awareness, consciousness of moral interests, and action as an individual subject to the moral law." Which is what we would hope for, really.

Although they intend to include themselves within the lines of demarcation, they are not wholly successful. For instance, if these philosophers were to fall into a deep sleep they would cease to meet the very criteria that they have established for personhood. Using their own arguments, we should be able to kill them before they wake up.

This is old, well-worn, and lame. Nobody interested in these issues is confused by the difference between being asleep and being dead, nor have they overlooked it. It's for this reason that the criteria for moral personhood are usually expressed as the capacity for engaging the moral world - not the active exercise of doing so minute by minute. You certainly retain your mentally-based capacities while you are asleep (we do not say someone who speaks French loses that ability while they are asleep - they are merely not using it at that time, but they still have the capacity for doing so). That includes the capacity for experiencing moral goods and acting on moral concepts - i.e., personhood. But those capacities are lost entirely in brain death or other severe derangement of the necessarily mental functions. So a moral person is still a moral person after going to sleep, but not after experiencing brain death or severe neurological injury.

They may protest that they were persons before they fell asleep. But so were the “hopelessly comatose.” Yes, but the difference, they’ll contend, is that they’ll meet the criteria again once they wake up. True, but if they are killed in their sleep they won’t ever wake up, so it makes that a moot point.

That's nonsense. How does the possibility that you'll be killed in your sleep make you a nonperson? You could be killed while you're awake, too, but that doesn't make you a corpse.

It's simple: you're a person as long as you retain the capacities necessary to the functions for personhood (previously discussed). Your brain retains all its powers and capacities even when it's not using them, unless and until it becomes damaged to the point that it can't exercise those functions - then, but not until then, you're dead.

What does it matter that a human being was a person or will once again be a person?

To the best of our knowledge, you can't "again" become a person. Once you cease being one, it's forever. That makes a big and unbridgeable difference between being asleep and being dead.

If it is morally acceptable to kill non-human persons then what matters is what they are right now.

I think you meant "human non-persons". That's what you've been discussing just above, and at any rate it isn't morally acceptable to kill non-human persons, any more than it is acceptable to kill human persons.

More importantly, if you reject this conclusion, you have to show why. It has nothing to do with being asleep or awake. You yourself have admitted that species membership is not definitive of personhood, and that mental capacity is - from that it seems to follow closely that it is not wrong to treat non-persons as . . . well, non-persons . . . if they do not possess, or have lost, the mental capacity that would demand otherwise. Why is this wrong?

(You might find my justification absurd. Indeed, I hope you do because this type of thinking is utterly idiotic. The blatant attempts at rationalizing clearly immoral behavior is why Frank Beckwith and other scholars have been able to demolish the “functionalism” argument, that defends the killing of "non-person" humans.)

Wrong answer. It's not, and they didn't. You can't refute an argument you yourself just proved by merely asserting that someone else "demolished" it. If there's a reason, you should be able to explain what it is.

The reason why it is wrong to kill philosophy professors in their sleep is the same reason it is wrong to destroy embryos: moral people do not kill innocent human beings.

(1) There's an important difference between philosophy professors and embryos; it's one you keep overlooking.

(2) "Innocence" has nothing to do with this argument. (Even the non-innocent can be persons, and being innocent does not make you a person - which is what your argument is about.)

(3) We've already established that "human being" is not synonymous with personhood. You're retreating to the point you yourself already disproved (that human beings are persons), to escape the consequences of the conclusion you yourself already proved (that personhood requires mental capacity). You've defeated yourself.

Not all persons are human beings. And it may even be the case that not all human beings are persons.

OK - but you began this argument by stipulating - and then giving reasons to show - that neither of these determines whether a particular human being is a person. That's the issue that matters in determining how we may treat them.

But all human beings—whether persons or non-persons--are human beings. This is a scientifically and ontologically verifiable fact.

It's a tautology! It would be true no matter what the definition of "human being" is, or what they are like. It means nothing.

Advocates for embryo and fetal destruction should stop playing semantic games and admit that what they believe is that it is acceptable to kill some human being because human beings do not have intrinsic worth.

No - they believe that it is acceptable to kill some human beings because some human beings are not moral persons. (They probably also believe that they don't have "intrinsic worth", but almost certainly they believe that that's an empty, or at least arbitrary, concept anyway. And note that nothing at all about your previous discussion has anything to do with "intrinsic worth". You have abandoned your own arguments - which actually presented a decent case for abortion and infanticide - and are now throwing in completely unrelated terms.) And they're hardly coy about that - that's precisely the argument of one of the main lines of support for abortion rights, and you yourself quoted above several prominent philosophers who say exactly what I said above, in almost precisely those terms. It's not a question of "admitting" what their argument is - that's what their argument is!

They should also stop making the ridiculous claim that their opinions on personhood are based on “science”

Depends on what that claim is. If it is that personhood demands certain mental qualities, that's an argument from moral theory, not science, and nobody would claim otherwise. (Hint: It's religious conservatives who are constantly telling us that moral facts can be derived from natural observations.)

If the claim is that those mental qualities alluded to above are or are not possessed by certain creatures, that is a scientific question, and can only be answered by science.

(when did metaphysics become an empirical science?)

Nothing about this has to do with metaphysics. It's a straightforward issue of moral goods, moral psychology, and biology / computer science /information theory / complexity theory / what have you.

and should instead employ historical arguments to defend their position.

The history of any given practice has nothing to do with its morality. (PS: Be sure to mention this to John Noonan.)

If you want to kill certain groups of human beings, you can find a sufficient rationalization.

What you need is a sufficient logical argument. Luckily, you've given us one!

I really do think this is a hodge-podge of unrelated and somewhat garbled concerns. Trying to drag some coherent sense out of it, it seems as if you began with a complicated discussion of moral personhood that actually succeeded in demonstrating why moral personhood is necessary for moral rights - exactly the claim most ethicists have been making all along. You then attempted to defeat the concept of personhood by claiming it can't be distinguished from other states such as sleep or death - but that claim is laughable. You ended by citing a number of concepts and terms that had not appeared anywhere previously in the entire post - "innocence", "intrinsic worth" - while claiming that arguments about personhood were self-interested, unscientific, or Nazi-like. This merely underscores the stickiness of the corner you've painted yourself into: personhood is, as you discovered, an important and robust moral concept, and supports conclusions that can only be evaded by changing the subject. with a little cleaning up, this could turn into a useful pro-choice article!

An excellent post Keith, although I would propose one more modification. Let's make this really simple by using the following terms:

human life - anything that is alive and of the human species.

human soul - that quality (whether it be natural or supernatural or both) that makes life into a living human beign.

In other words, instead of confusing outselves with philsophical terms let's use an old fashioned one. When does a human body have a soul and when doesn't it? As I talked about in previous posts, early Christians thought quickening (the moment a baby's kicks could be felt) was the moment a soul either entered or was created inside the body of an unborn baby.

What a strange world such an early Christian would find if they came here and read Joe's posts about human persons versus human non-persons and so on. Yet their belief wouldn't be foolish or simpleminded. Their belief can be summarized as thre is a difference between human life and being a human beign.

In the previous threads, where only the determined Gordon remains to engage me, I proposed an alternative view. Suppose human personhood is the point at which a soul (whatever that is) can use a body.

We do not when or if a soul is ever part of a body. We do know that brain function is related to whether a soul can use a body. A body lacking a functioning brain cannot do the things that would allow it to participate in human nature.

As you point out we usually define the end of life as the point where the brain has become so damaged as to be permanently unusable. At the beginning of life it would lead to a 'quickening' type verdict on abortion, embryo research and so on. Early on in a pregnancy such things would be generally tolerated, not necessarily celebrated but as a pregnancy progresses their moral questionability increases.

As I pointed out before this value is a discrete, binary property. It is either 1 or 0. That a newborn babies brain may be a tenth as complicated as an adult does not lead one to consider the adult to be ten times the human beign anymore than beign twice 18 gives you the right to vote two times in every election.

kwbr:

I'm pretty sure "miscarriage" is reasonably accurate in the case of Exodus 21.

Anna:
If the miscarriage/premature birth were not the result of a direct assault on the woman or an attempt to make the baby die, then it is not murder.

Read the whole passage. It goes on to state that if the woman dies as a result of the fight, you should take life for life. The death of the woman is no less accidental than the death of the "baby," yet the punishment is much more severe.

Why can a baby in the womb at week 38 be aborted although it could survive outside the womb just because the mother decides to have a partial birth abortion but once the baby is out of the womb at 40 or so weeks, it can no longer be killed?

I actually have no objection to prohibiting women from aborting a baby that late term, unless delivering the baby seriously risks the woman's life, health, or future futility. However, in that rarest of rare cases (fewer than 1% of all abortions are performed after 20 weeks, never mind 38 weeks), where abortion is medically necessary (it does happen), the "partial birth" method of abortion is by far the safest way to do it.

Roger:

Your comment makes sense only to those who already believe what you assert. To anyone else, it's nonsensical.

Crystal Lake:

I think you misinterpret and/or misrepresent the arguments there. But this sort of disagreement often stems from a fundamental disagreement about what ethics even are. If your foundation is deontological ethics, where the rules is the rules is the rules, as dictated down from On High, then we have nowhere to go. If, however, you ascribe to consequentialist ethics (where the consequences determine the morality of an action, rather than whether the action is simply against some arbitrary set of rules), then we can talk.

All the talk of brain structure and experience, etc., isn't to assign "value" at all, certainly not in the market sense. Instead, it's there to answer a simple question: Who or what is harmed by this action? If there's no "there" there, then there's no harm.

It's wrong to kill a sleeping person because even though that person is asleep, s/he's still a person, who has, has had, and will continue to have self-awareness, the ability to suffer, feel pain, etc. In the Terry Schiavo fiasco, she had possessed self-awareness and an ability to suffer, but the vast majority of those capacities were long gone and had no chance of returning. In the case of an embryo or early-term fetus, it may eventually gain those capacities, but it doesn't have them right now, and has never had them. (This is even clearer in the case of research embryos, which even if left totally alone would never gain those capacities.)

Thus, the ethical argument has nothing at all to do with "value," but with self-awareness, identity, and the ability to suffer. If an entity has never had any of those things, then nobody/nothing is harmed in killing that entity. Embryos and early-term fetuses fit this description. If it had those things at one time, but no longer does, and has no chance of ever regaining them, nobody/nothing is harmed in killing the entity (and, one could argue, harm is done by keeping the entity alive). Terry Schiavo falls into this group. If, however, the entity has these traits, or if the entity is currently without them but has had them in the past and will likely have them again in the future, then there is someone harmed, and we are no longer morally allowed to kill such an entity without extreme circumastances (e.g., self defense).

Please note that I talk about the "entity" not to try to pretend that I'm not talking about humans in most cases, but because the logic applies wider than just to humans / "moral persons." In other words, I'm not necessarily talking only about humans.

Quote: "I was tempted to respond to the basic argument, but I couldn't figure out what it was."

Didn't care to read the title, eh Kev?

Quote: "I find this passage contains a lot of confusions; I have to say, Joe, that this is not one of your better efforts."

It's so easy to throw critism around. Frankly, I thought this was a logical, well-structured, and poignant writing.

Well, that post, and the comments, would be a splendid assigned reading for a bioethics class, it seems to me.

Thanks.

Thanks guys for the responses. The financial agruement holds little weight as any baby born truly premature would have died in such a society without modern medicince. Simply look at Africa or rural India. And if the baby was born a few weeks premature the family would already be financially ready therefore the law must cover an earlier period of pregancy. I'm really trying to understand the agruement of being human at conception. Does anyone beleive that here? As Joe pointed out in a diffferent article, what about IVF? Are those people and doctors all murderers, I doubt it. And what about natural miscarriage? If the egg is fertilized, but then does not implant, did a "child die"? Why would God send a soul down at conception just so it come go back to heaven in less then a week without the woman even knowing she was pregant. Is that the true picture of Christ? I make the same agruement for natural miscarriage if the woman is healthy, no drugs no alcohol. Once again what is the point? The biblical counteragruement I see for that is if the woman knows she is pregant, then God may be allowing the devil to test her a.k.a Job, to see if she will still follow God even with a loss of her baby. If anyone has or knows of a good agruement for human at conception, please let me know. Also don't respond back with "I knew you before you were born" as this simply means to me that God has your soul in heaven waiting to be send down since He made you, but that he sends the soul into the body at a later time then conception. As I said I am a Christian so you need not appeal to science to convince me as having a soul, not a certain IQ, is what makes you human in my book.

Michael,
I believe you are human from the time of conception, because that is the "creation event". Before that time, there was sex cells from your mother and father. Afterward, you are you. Then you grow.
R.E. miscarriage and failed implantation: people die all the time. We live in a fallen world. Probably, in a perfect world, every fetilized egg would implant and be healthy. But that is not the world we live in. See the forum debate on God's will versus God's plan. God's will would be for every person to grow to have a long, healthy life knowing Him. His plan allows for us to choose the world we live in.

Your statement "Why Personhood is Not Enough" is a perfect reminder to Christians like me who tend to get too focused on this present life. Persons don't live after this short life... thanks for the reminder! thinkingsand.blogspot.com

The reason why it is wrong to kill philosophy professors in their sleep is the same reason it is wrong to destroy embryos: moral people do not kill innocent human beings. Not all persons are human beings. And it may even be the case that not all human beings are persons. But all human beings—whether persons or non-persons--are human beings. This is a scientifically and ontologically verifiable fact.

So I'll ask again, it certainly seems that Mr. Spock (if he was real) would be a person but he isn't a human beign. Would it be wrong to kill him or would the murderer be excused on the ground that he never took the life of a human beign?

Never read them but it sounds like an interesting idea. I've written before the discovery of non-human intelligent life would be a major, major challenge to Christianity. Not an impossible challenge but its leaders would have to decide what to make of such a thing. Would they decide that alien intelligences have souls and are therefore 'just like us' or would they decide that such things do not have souls or, worse, are really satanic figures? If they did have souls how would Christianity fit in with them?

Before secularists here trained on plenty of Star Trek episodes where alien life form means a woman in a bikini painted with green skin jump to a conclusion what about an alien intelligence that is very different, very different from what we are?

Or if you don't like the idea of addressing the morality of killing Mr. Spock try this one http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/003596.html.

In about two years the Neanderthal Genome will be sequenced. In a not to distant future it may be possible to fully clone a neanderthal just as some scientists today hope to clone the mammoth back into existence.

Assuming such a thing is done (for the sake of the argument let's assume a human woman is NOT needed to carry the neanderthal fetus), what are its ethical implications? Would it not be a human beign per Joe's argument and therefore the morality of killing it or experimenting on it will not be an issue? What if it appears to have personhood? What if it is able to speak to us and learn to communicate with us, if imperfectly?

Joe's argument would seem to shut it out from moral consideration since being a human beign is the ultimate trigger here.

NB:

A bit off topic, so I apreciate the resort to the forum. On the topic, the issues are on where the burden of proof lies before we "depersonalise," and potwntiallly harm.

The challenge raised in the exchange with B would be rhetorical, as it would be headlined as a "major triumph" of spontaneous abiogenesis.

We should not let such rhetoric shut our eyes to the issues faced by such a proposal. before allowing such trumpeting to go ahead again -- recall the embarrassment of NASA in 1996, we need to ask some very hard questions ties tot he origins of ht ecomplex, functionally specific information at the core of biological life, and insist on cogent, coherent answers. [NB: Hugh Ross, for instance points out that there is a major possibility of contamination of Mars by esp unicellular earthly lifeforms.]

There is within the JudaeoChristian worldview no commitment to the non-existence of life on any other entity in the physical cosmos. Indeed, there is on some readings, a testimony to highly intelligent life that is non-human and even non-physical!

Grace

GEM

All:

Back from a week of ministry at a camp in a neighbouring island.

B of course, sadly, as usual faile sot see the material point:

The challenge raised in the exchange with B would be rhetorical [NB: i.e. rather than factual-logical, as it would be headlined as a "major triumph" of spontaneous abiogenesis.

We should not let such rhetoric shut our eyes to the issues faced by such a proposal. before allowing such trumpeting to go ahead again -- recall the embarrassment of NASA in 1996, we need to ask some very hard questions ties tot he origins of ht ecomplex, functionally specific information at the core of biological life, and insist on cogent, coherent answers . . . . There is within the JudaeoChristian worldview no commitment to the non-existence of life on any other entity in the physical cosmos. Indeed, there is on some readings, a testimony to highly intelligent life that is non-human and even non-physical

In effect:

1] The christian faith is specifically focussed on this planet and its challenges with sin and salvation in the face of the world the flesh and the devil [and his highlyn intelligent cohorts]

2] Spontaneous abiogenesis leading to the emergence of biologicxal and then diverse ultimately intelligent life is fraught with serious unanswered -- indeed, within science, currently unanswerable -- challenges on the dynamics of chance-driven processies that it must rely on.

3] Thus the issue is of such magnitude that should one of those saucers land att he US White House or Tianamen Square or the Kremlin, Rome, jerusalem ofd Mecca tomorrow and out pops a crew ofd vaguely reptilian and highly intelligent bug-eyed green or greyish creatures telling us stories that "confirm" what many want to hear -- but nor answering the above challenges, I would immediately and for excellent reason, suspect a spiritual con game.

GEM