subbie - When Does Personhood Begin?

[_subgenius]

Regarding the personhood debate, it does no good to insist something is a human life. You have to show why being a human life is something that deserves moral and/or legal respect.

I agree with your premise here...but all that is wholly unnecessary if you, yourself, believe that human life is deserving of such respect - so is it?
Or do you currently hold the position that no, human life does not deserve said respect because it has not been "shown to me" yet ?

Not only is this not self-evident like some pro-lifers act, it’s also widely rejected.

It is only widely rejected by pro-abortion-ers in the wake of the whole abortion rooted in eugenics-racism thingy.
I think most people in this country know it is self-evident because of such pesky thing ike the DoI:
that reads:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (emphasis mine)
or how this same language is used in the 5th amendment, the 14th amendment, and even article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...this all seems to counter your assertion of "widely rejected"

But again...EA, do you believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is a self-evident truth?

[_EAllusion]

Regarding the personhood debate, it does no good to insist something is a human life. You have to show why being a human life is something that deserves moral and/or legal respect.

I agree with your premise here...but all that is wholly unnecessary if you, yourself, believe that human life is deserving of such respect - so is it?

No, I do not think "human life" is a necessary or sufficient condition to determine if something deserves moral respect.
I agree with those who are morally OK with ending life support for those in a permanent vegetative state or think that non-humans can have traits make them deserving of moral and legal rights. I think mental qualities are more likely to be what matters, but even if I didn't think that, I don't find arguments that try to locate personhood in being a biologically distinct, living human to be persuasive. I am with a strong majority of philosophers and most of the public on this point. Even on a basic intuitive level and generously ignoring the fuzzy boundaries of what it means to be a distinct living human, it doesn't make a lot of sense why having homo sapiens DNA would create moral status.

It is only widely rejected by pro-abortion-ers in the wake of the whole abortion rooted in eugenics-racism thingy.

That's not true at all.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (emphasis mine)

Yeah, "men" here means people as in persons. This has a narrower meaning. In fact, the person who wrote that sentence owned slaves that were not entitled to those rights because they were considered not "men" in the sense the document meant. Abortion up to about 20 weeks was predominantly legal in what became the United States at the time this document was written as well. Legal prohibitions on abortion that Roe struck down were a much more recent development.

or how this same language is used in the 5th amendment, the 14th amendment, and even article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...this all seems to counter your assertion of "widely rejected"

You're equivocating what "human" means in those documents. "Human" in the notion of human rights refers to personhood, not human in its bare biological sense. You can't declare the two one in the same and call it a day. That takes actual argument.

My assertion of widely rejected is based on reasoning I already gave. We can point to examples of living humans that people do not think have moral or legal rights like people ordinarily do and have no problem with this fact. Abortion and medical research are a good examples of this - lots of people don't think embryos are people - but we can step outside of abortion if we want to. People who have permanently lost the capacity for conscious thought are widely thought not to be persons. Some don't see it that way, but they are a minority.

Self-evidence and popular agreement are different things. The latter does not demonstrate the former, but you are wrong if you are trying to suggest that a near universal agreement exists. It does not.

But again...EAllusion, do you believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is a self-evident truth?

Not at all. Not even in the correct natural rights theory rights sense this was meant rather than your misreading of it. I don't mean to fault someone for living in the 18th century though, and this rhetorical ploy of yours doesn't mean I don't agree with people having a basic right to equality before the law and liberties that exist independent of the state's will.

The self-evident statement in the Declaration is bad, and the ideas from enlightenment philosophy it was asserting have a lot of arguments behind them from thinkers who saw fit to justify their ideas rather than just declare them to be self-evident. But it sounds cool and saves space.

[_subgenius]

No, I do not think "human life" is a necessary or sufficient condition to determine if something deserves moral respect.

Fair enough, but is curious how each of your following examples is a moral respect of life, whether it be quality or quantity you seem to hold the fundamental concept of "life" as being something distinct inasmuch as its value is morally defined by a variety of circumstances.
for example:

I agree with those who are morally OK with ending life support for those in a permanent vegetative state or think that non-humans can have traits make them deserving of moral and legal rights. I think mental qualities are more likely to be what matters, but even if I didn't think that, I don't find arguments that try to locate personhood in being a biologically distinct, living human to be persuasive.

personhood, if such a thing exists, isn't afforded to anything else but living humans and to a limited legal extent, the dead human beings. Personhood for my living room rug ain't a thing.

I am with a strong majority of philosophers and most of the public on this point.

not really.

Even on a basic intuitive level and generously ignoring the fuzzy boundaries of what it means to be a distinct living human, it doesn't make a lot of sense why having homo sapiens DNA would create moral status.

Sure it does....moral status being human and all that stuff. You don't have moral status or a lack of because you're a rock...you have it because YOU are human.

It is only widely rejected by pro-abortion-ers in the wake of the whole abortion rooted in eugenics-racism thingy.

That's not true at all.

Yes it is.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." (emphasis mine)

Yeah, "men" here means people as in persons. This has a narrower meaning. In fact, the person who wrote that sentence owned slaves that were not entitled to those rights because they were considered not "men" in the sense the document meant. Abortion up to about 20 weeks was predominantly legal in what became the United States at the time this document was written as well. Legal prohibitions on abortion that Roe struck down were a much more recent development.

Great speech, but the question was kinda simple...either you do or you do not...so which is it?
See while you may want to discount the concept by sidestepping to a "blacks weren't considered human back then" it does not change the statement. Because the foundation is the same...Jefferson's sentiment would be the same...or do you seriously think he would change his mind if those times did not have slaves and did not exclude blacks from the "men" definition? No, he would not because the concept recognizes such fluidity...just as you slide your morality and definitions as more information becomes available, but yet you still hold the same moral principle to be true.
Nevertheless, did you answer Yes ? or No?

or how this same language is used in the 5th amendment, the 14th amendment, and even article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...this all seems to counter your assertion of "widely rejected"

You're equivocating what "human" means in those documents. "Human" in the notion of human rights refers to personhood, not human in its bare biological sense.

oh, so you get to do the equivocating but no one else.
I'm pretty sure "Human" just means "Human" and not some post mortem loophole you keep trying to insert in order to justify moving the goal posts on a right to life argument.
But since you insist on arguments proving their assertions, please feel free to support the equivocation you are making here.

You can't declare the two one in the same and call it a day. That takes actual argument.

kinda like your ambiguous notion of personhood....which still plays about undefined in this context.

My assertion of widely rejected is based on reasoning I already gave. We can point to examples of living humans that people do not think have moral or legal rights like people ordinarily do and have no problem with this fact. Abortion and medical research are a good examples of this - lots of people don't think embryos are people

yet embryos still have rights.

- but we can step outside of abortion if we want to. People who have permanently lost the capacity for conscious thought are widely thought not to be persons. Some don't see it that way, but they are a minority.

yet they still have rights....so...nope,
ergo the whole "die with dignity" concept, non-persons don't need dignity. And above you have already conceded that you agree with morality.

Self-evidence and popular agreement are different things. The latter does not demonstrate the former, but you are wrong if you are trying to suggest that a near universal agreement exists. It does not.

I was not suggesting that, I was simply - and obviously - illustrating the contradiction that reality offers for your false claim of "widely".

But again...EAllusion, do you believe that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness is a self-evident truth?

Not at all. Not even in the correct natural rights theory rights sense this was meant rather than your misreading of it. I don't mean to fault someone for living in the 18th century though, and this rhetorical ploy of yours doesn't mean I don't agree with people having a basic right to equality before the law and liberties that exist independent of the state's will.

The self-evident statement in the Declaration is bad, and the ideas from enlightenment philosophy it was asserting have a lot of arguments behind them from thinkers who saw fit to justify their ideas rather than just declare them to be self-evident. But it sounds cool and saves space.

well, you could have just answered that you don't believe it, the extemporaneous imposition for what you insist was really intended is both arguable and unnecessary. Justifying your non-beleif in the cited DoI etc was not solicited nor necessary...unless you were offering it up for debate?

[_EAllusion]

personhood, if such a thing exists, isn't afforded to anything else but living humans and to a limited legal extent, the dead human beings. Personhood for my living room rug ain't a thing.

First, you are asserting a stance about personhood, but are just instead choosing to use the word "human" instead while impregnating that term with all that is meant by personhood. The reason this isn't normally done is precisely because of the error you drag along with it, which is a simple equivocation between human in the biological sense and human in the sense of deserving human rights.

Second, personhood can be afforded to non-humans, already is to a partial extent with some animals, and is believed by plenty of people to apply to non-human things. A simple thought experiment can tease out this common intuition. If you ask people if Vulcans from Star Trek really existed, would they deserve basic human rights, I bet you bottom dollar most people would say yes. That's because people's intuitions tend to be aimed at shared mental qualities between humans and Vulcans rather than arbitrary distinctions in DNA. You may answer differently, but it's wrong of you to pretend like you own a dominant viewpoint.

I am with a strong majority of philosophers and most of the public on this point.

not really.

Well, it's hard to engage someone just gainsaying reality.

Sure it does....moral status being human and all that stuff. You don't have moral status or a lack of because you're a rock...you have it because YOU are human.

Yeah, it's clear that you think this, but you supply no reason to think it and can't even seem to fathom how to come up with reasons to think it. The entire idea of justification seems foreign to you.

Great speech, but the question was kinda simple...either you do or you do not...so which is it?
See while you may want to discount the concept by sidestepping to a "blacks weren't considered human back then" it does not change the statement. Because the foundation is the same...Jefferson's sentiment would be the same...or do you seriously think he would change his mind if those times did not have slaves and did not exclude blacks from the "men" definition? No, he would not because the concept recognizes such fluidity...just as you slide your morality and definitions as more information becomes available, but yet you still hold the same moral principle to be true.
Nevertheless, did you answer Yes ? or No?

I'm pointing out that you don't seem to understand what the word "men" means in that clause.

I'm pretty sure "Human" just means "Human"

Yeah, that's why you can't reason your way out of a paper bag on this topic.

You can't declare the two one in the same and call it a day. That takes actual argument.

kinda like your ambiguous notion of personhood....which still plays about undefined in this context.

Yeah, that's correct. If I want to assert some ideas about what does and does not count as persons, I have to supply some reasons to think that. Why would you think otherwise?

yet they still have rights....so...nope,

Chickens have rights, yet you were insisting that only humans are persons. What "vegetables" don't have is rights afforded to actual persons. That's why there is much greater legal permissiveness for how they may be treated including involuntarily withdrawing life saving care form them. You might not agree with this state of affairs, but you don't get to invent an entirely different set of facts.

ergo the whole "die with dignity" concept, non-persons don't need dignity.

People also get to have say over how their dead bodies will be treated that must be respected within certain boundaries. Dead bodies aren't living people with rights. Rather, this is about respecting the wishes of the living so that the still living can have solace in knowing their wishes too would be respected. There are moral taboos and laws against desecrating the dead even though a pile of bones has no need for this. That's about protecting living people's sensibilities and how the still living hope their remains will be treated when they too are dead. It's a view that property rights can be asserted past a person's natural life. That idea is what allows wills to carry force.

[_DoubtingThomas]

So the abortion debate is famously complex in phil of ethics, though philosophers have a strong preference for pro-choice positions over all. The single strongest argument for the pro-choice position revolves around the idea that fetuses, or at least fetuses in early development, aren't things that have moral status such that they deserve legal protections.

Thankfully medical science tells us that a fetus less than 24 weeks is probably not a human. "Assuming that consciousness is mainly localized in the cortex, consciousness cannot emerge before 24 gestational weeks when the thalamocortical connections from the sense organs are established"
Lagercrantz, Hugo. "The emergence of consciousness: science and ethics." Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. Vol. 19. No. 5. WB Saunders, 2014.

Abortion before 24 weeks should clearly be legal. However, nobody knows when human life begins. Philosophers don't know anything, only science can give us the answer.

[_EAllusion]

So the abortion debate is famously complex in phil of ethics, though philosophers have a strong preference for pro-choice positions over all. The single strongest argument for the pro-choice position revolves around the idea that fetuses, or at least fetuses in early development, aren't things that have moral status such that they deserve legal protections.

Thankfully medical science tells us that a fetus less than 24 weeks is probably not a human. "Assuming that consciousness is mainly localized in the cortex, consciousness cannot emerge before 24 gestational weeks when the thalamocortical connections from the sense organs are established"
Lagercrantz, Hugo. "The emergence of consciousness: science and ethics." Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. Vol. 19. No. 5. WB Saunders, 2014.

Abortion before 24 weeks should clearly be legal. However, nobody knows when human life begins. Philosophers don't know anything, only science can give us the answer.

A 23 week old fetus clearly is biologically human. What you mean by "human" must be more like "person" and science can't tell you what criteria we should have for considering something a person. It's clear that you think consciousness is a key factor, but science didn't tell you that.

[_DoubtingThomas]

A 23 week old fetus clearly is biologically human. What you mean by "human" must be more like "person" and science can't tell you what criteria we should have for considering something a person. It's clear that you think consciousness is a key factor, but science didn't tell you that.

Science is never going to tell us "abortion is good" or "abortion is bad", but we can use science to help us make a decision. Would you agree? Now, there are many definitions of "life". A definition is "Life is essentially cognitive and conscious"
Shanta, Bhakti Niskama. "Life and consciousness–The Vedāntic view." Communicative & integrative biology 8.5 (2015): e1085138.

I am talking about human life. We know human life must be conscious. Is is true nobody knows exactly what consciousness is or where it comes from, but perhaps science is someday going to give us the answer.

[_EAllusion]

We know human life must be conscious.

We don't know that. When a person temporarily loses consciousness, do you think they temporarily cease to be a human life? In any case, if you plan on defining human life in terms of experience of consciousness, that's definitely a position requiring a non-scientific argument. Biologically, a living, but not conscious human is still a living human in the sense of being a living member of the human species.

[_DoubtingThomas]

When a person temporarily loses consciousness, do you think they temporarily cease to be a human life? In any case, if you plan on defining human life in terms of experience of consciousness, that's definitely a position requiring a non-scientific argument.

Of course because there is no objective morality. Morality probably doesn't exists, but we can use science to help us make rational decisions.

Now we have to make some assumptions. We can assume that it is wrong to let conscious human beings die. When humans temporally lose consciousness is a different topic, but hopefully we can all agree that it is wrong to kill conscious humans. Would you agree?

[_subgenius]

First, you are asserting a stance about personhood, but are just instead choosing to use the word "human" instead while impregnating that term with all that is meant by personhood. The reason this isn't normally done is precisely because of the error you drag along with it, which is a simple equivocation between human in the biological sense and human in the sense of deserving human rights.
.

see, the thing is, the majority uses human as human and it's only a minority like you that chooses "personhood" solely as a means to discard all the little inconvenient truths that negate your position and keep you safely tucked in your little bag.

Second, personhood can be afforded to non-humans,

not reasonably, some quacks are trying but these are the sorts of people that want to bring their therapy rooster on a plane.

already is to a partial extent with some animals,

no its not.

and is believed by plenty of people to apply to non-human things.

irrelevant. lots of people believe lots of things, that does not make anything valid in this context, does it?

A simple thought experiment can tease out this common intuition. If you ask people if Vulcans from Star Trek really existed, would they deserve basic human rights, I bet you bottom dollar most people would say yes. That's because people's intuitions tend to be aimed at shared mental qualities between humans and Vulcans rather than arbitrary distinctions in DNA.

Not a simple thought experiment, but rather an absurd and imaginary example....like this, if rocks could speak English, walk, and mostly look human - would you let them vote?
bet most people would say no.

You may answer differently, but it's wrong of you to pretend like you own a dominant viewpoint.

cool thing about reality is that I don't have to pretend. Your reliance on speculation as being fact is voodoo. For example, if I went to an African village and asked your Vulcan question, your bottom dollar would be mine.

The entire idea of justification seems foreign to you.

you're the one making the claims, slick. And speculation about Mr Spock and hoping that your assertions are as self-evident to others as they are to you is irony that is not lost here.

I'm pointing out that you don't seem to understand what the word "men" means in that clause.

how I understand what men means in that clause is not relevant to your belief or disbelief in that clause.

Yeah, that's why you can't reason your way out of a paper bag on this topic.

look around, it's you in zee bag..which is in a box.

Chickens have rights, yet you were insisting that only humans are persons.

huh? me be think you the confused.