What qualifies an entity as a "person"? Once the criteria defining personhood are agreed, the personhood (or not) of a particular entity is fairly easy to determine: Does the entity meet the criteria or not? So... Agreeing on criteria should be an obvious first step, before any attempt at legislation. Personally, I have trouble with sentences that begin with "life begins at...". Life is a continuum, parents through eggs and sperm to offspring, with never a break. We must choose a moment, somewhere in that sequence. I can see two radically different, totally separate approaches: scientific and religious. The religious approach is simpler, conceptually. The moment of personhood is the moment when the (ephemeral) body is joined by an (eternal) soul. That's "conceptually". Then there's the "pragmatic" side: when is that moment? The Hebrews apparently considered it to be birth, or perhaps more precisely, "first breath". The only Biblical texts I have seen that seem pertinent could fit either. Today, many "pro-life" folks promote "fertilization" as the moment of personhood. They rarely present any justification for this choice. They simply decree it. Which means that the debate quickly degenerates into "is / is not / is / is not..." It seems to me that if one bases one's position on religion, one should be able to produce chapter and verse, fairly explicitly. I have yet to see it. The practical, legal consequences of personhood at fertilization are never examined. The scientific approach is messier than the religious, because we have no obvious, unequivocal choice. We must first define our criteria and then fit them to gestation. There are many candidates. Viability. Pain. Self-awareness. Speech (yes, some Indians didn't consider the infant to be a person until long after birth). Perhaps others. My own choice is self-awareness. I consider that a scientific definition of personhood should be applicable beyond our own species. Some day we will meet beings whose gestation is nothing like ours -- our criteria should not need to be changed. I also wonder about bonobos who use hundreds of words in sign language. What would we do with an emergent Artificial Intelligence? I am fairly confident of my approach to the subject of personhood. I am not at all confident of my conclusions. I would appreciate your comments.
Anything after conception is a completely arbitrary point which can be moved haphazardly by anyone based on any whimsical criteria. Thus it is completely illogical to entertain any point past the moment of conception as the genesis of personhood, life, and humanity. I know people don't like to admit this because the environment we live in teaches us to get emotionally tangled up in this issue and to react to buzz words like "women's rights" without really thinking them through, but I think that if you can take yourself out of that emotional perspective, you'll see that this really does make the most logical sense.
Hi, My purpose is to eliminate "arbitrary". But to my mind, simply stating, as you do here, that there is something special about "fertilization"... is completely arbitrary. Why do you consider that moment to be more significant than any other? I am open to either scientific or religious argumentation...
I'd love to ask Paul Ryan, an "expert" on both taxation and "personhood"... if I could count 30 fertilized human ova as "dependents" on my income taxes?
Anything before birth is a completely arbitrary point. Everything that makes a person a person occurs after birth. We're also forgetting the mother in all of this, a person who very definitely has rights and control over her own body, but that gets lost in the clammer to give rights to entities with none of the mental characteristics of a person whose only claim to personhood is that they are biologically alive. Birth is the best place to strike the balance because it protects the rights of the mother and gaurantees rights to the child at the very same moment in time. It can't be confused, and it can't be attacked with arbitrary emotional interpretations of when a person is a person. When you're actually brought screaming into this world, that's when you're a person because that's when the biggest change in the timeline of any human being occurs. That's the moment when you are effectively disconnected from your host and become an independent entity capable of being sustained by any other competent person, even by children. Before birth, it is only the mother who can provide that. Only that one unique person out of over six billion people. Premature babies? The moment they leave their mother, be it by birth or surgery, they are born. Same thing as carrying it to term, it just happens sooner.
IMHO, the presence of mind is the best, and most necessary criterion for personhood. Mindless life is not a person, but a tissue. Similarly, minds would be persons even when not inhabiting a living body (sentient AI, uploaded people). When does the mind appear? We know it cannot be sooner than after 20 weeks of fetal development, since the mind is the result of functioning brain cortex, indicated by cortical brain waves. Those appear after 20 weeks. Sooner, there can be no mind, since there is no cortical brain function. (this is the logical reverse of brain death, which is defined as cessation of cortical brain function. if we define death of a person as such, it only makes sense to define the beginning as the same) http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/anand/ Conception is as arbitrary as anything else. Personhood definition is a value judgement, not a fact. Slippery slope logical fallacy is not an argument.
I slightly agree but some terms are vague. A developed consciousness is usually a marker for it, some people bring other examples into this like people with brain damage or some sort of mental disability even though these people possess such attributes even if they are not as functional. Another example is given of a brain dead person and whether personhood is reserved for them which is tricky since even now they aren't classified as persons as family members can choose to cut off life support much like with the example of abortion as a zygot possesses no such attributes an early fetus doesn't but around some time during the pregnancy a fetus does develop consciousness more self awareness and obviously viability which is when it is given more rights (in America anyway). Though personhood in law is different to that of science as science looks at consciousness the legal system is very different to what constitutes a person. I do find it interesting of possible other forms of personhood like you said artificial intelligence if they are truly self aware and have "free will" do they constitute a person. There's also the thought of alien life as what would we classify as a person. Now obviously all of this is completely hypothetical but is relevant when thinking of possible thought experiments.
Yeah, but so what? What's so significant about being independent? What makes that the irrefutable parameter for personhood as opposed to, say, anything else?
Because that's when you join the world. It's simply the most logical emotion-free line. Something that's not even been brought into the world yet can't have rights. That's completely silly. If we are going down that road, where does it really end? Where you say it should? There are implications if you're trying to give rights at the moment of conception. And, if not then, when? Two weeks BEFORE conception like Arizona does? Two weeks after? Implantation on the uterine wall? All of those things are completely arbitrary and even less obvious. Rights don't exist inside a uterus. They exist out here, in the real world, because they are a product of that real world. When you're born, you've now become a part of that world which is why you have rights the moment you're born. No worrying about souls that not everyone believes in to begin with. No near impossible attempts at nailing down when conception actually happened. No huge burdens on the legal system that now must contend with a whole new area of crime created by giving rights to fetuses. You may scoff at the idea that mother's who miscarry will get caught up in it, but it will happen, because personhood for a fetus means exactly that. When someone dies in the real world, there is an investigation, because that person had rights. What happens when a fetus dies? No investigation? Oh, they have a right to not be aborted, but that's it? Even car accidents are investigated. So now we're investigating every woman who has a miscarriage. "Gale down the hall said she was pregnant a couple months ago. Now she's not? I'm calling the cops." This is the world you create giving personhood to things that have no business having more rights than the mother who created it and is carrying it, sustaining it, and whose body and mind must bear the effects of it. There's nothing wrong with those things if the woman wants to have them. But it should be, it needs to be, her choice, and I'm sorry, but sex is not consent for pregnancy. It doesn't mean people shouldn't use protection and be cautious at all, but that's also their choice.
"Life" isn't the issue. We're talking about an individual human being; and while his or her physical life might be described as a continuum, it nevertheless has two definite endpoints. It really couldn't be simpler: no sperm or egg placed by itself in a womb will ever become a mature human being, wherefore we may be confident that neither qualifies as a human life. And how exactly would you propose to determine whether or not a fertilized human egg has it?
I could say the same about implantation - after all up to 70% of fertilised eggs never implant - so what were they? Are the fertilised eggs in a petri dish at an IVF clinic "persons"?
"Yeah, but so what? What's so significant about being independent?" Good point. A cat is VERY independent.
I agree with you completely -- but one of the initial responses spoke of "the beginning of life". My intent here was to show that that line of reasoning is a dead-end. What you say is true... but VERY incomplete. A fertilized egg has the potential to become a person... but that hardly means that it is one. Cake batter has the potential to become a cake... Psychologists have tests. Babies become self-aware a few months after birth. I suspect that this off-set was useful back when infant mortality was very high. It meant that parents could be less hurt by the loss of a new-born. Many societies' legal codes recognized that a new-born was not yet a person, with lesser penalties for their killing. Some Indian tribes "named" their children only when they began to walk or talk. Considering the capacity of modern society to care for a new-born that the parents might not want to keep, I would set "legal rights" personhood at birth. This implies that we -- collectively -- make an engagement to genuinely care for unwanted babies, not just to park them in a forgotten corner.
Yes, it does, tough generally less sapient. But we are talking about humans here. Chimpanzees also have a conception, while we are at it.
Which first breath? In the womb, the baby starts taking "breaths", but of course it is not of air. The baby will practice breathing long before it ever reaches air. So is there something more specific that "first breath"? How about the justification that the cell after fertilization in the tubes is different genetically than any other person on the face of the planet? How is that not a specific enough time? I thought we were talking about humans here? But "self-awareness" is generic and can be a criteria to say new borns and mentally retarded people are not self aware or fully self aware, so they can be extinguished by the parents when they decide it is too much of a burden to take care of offspring.
Like what? Fully developed organs? Breath? Heart starts beating? Thumb sucking? What makes and person and person in your eyes? BTW, "birth" can happen from any where from 21 weeks to 45 weeks, and they can be considered a person. How is 24 weeks not "arbitrary" in the timeframe? She had the right to have sex and create a new living being. After that, you need to take into consideration of the rights of a new human being just starting life. Growing, maturing, and eventually being more productive as time goes on. As I said, there is such a wide window for that time frame you call birth. How can that not be confusing? And if you happen to not be screaming until the moment the doctor smacks you bottom, does the mom still have the right to end your life? What about the premies that cant scream yet but would still survive with medical assistance? Are they not humans yet? I would say when you go from being incomplete in your DNA to being complete (conception) is by far the biggest change in the timeline of any human being, but hey, I am just speaking scientifically and not arbitrarily. You are saying the 22 week premie is independent? Funny that you claim newborns are "independent" while in the same sentence saying they need to be sustained by a competent person. Not very independent if you ask me. But if you want to say they can still be put down or "aborted", I have a bunch of people in Detroit that need to be aborted too. So then after birth, it can be a decission of many people to put someone down just because? hmmmm.
And how do you test how old the baby is before they are out of the womb. Serious question, can you test the brain waves before birth? My son projected birth day fluctuated over a month span and we could never get a precise, acurate measurment of how far along he was in the womb. What if at 19 weeks we decided to abort, and come to find out he was actually 22 weeks along?
Wow, I will stop right there. There are no emotions at the time of birth? After 20+ hrs of labor, there is no emotions huh?
Great accuracy is not actually required. Brain development varies individually, but this is not a problem when you realise that for the purpose of abortion legislation we do not need to know when brain waves are present, but a lower limit when they cannot be present. This is easy to establish, and the worst that will happen is some mindless foetii will be prematurely protected. I dont know if presence of brainwaves can be tested before birth in a practical manner, tough, but it was done in the study I linked. By the way, laws are chock-full of similar fuzzy limits made exact. As for those calling the others opinions arbitrary, I reiterate that this is all arbitrary and subjective. The whole idea of "personhood" is based on subjective and arbitrary opinion. Science and logic can guide us, but it will not answer this moral question for us alone, because the question itself is not scientific. This holds true for conception, brain waves, viability, self-awareness, birth and who knows what else.
I don't know ancient Hebrew law at all. This notion was given as a better interpretation of the Bible. It is the first breath of air, just after birth, of course. That's true... but in no way implies personhood. The single cell has none of the characteristics of a person... unless you wish to invoke some religious aspect. Why limit personhood to humans? My friend the Martian would not be pleased! I agree that there is a good chance that a non-religious definition of personhood would exclude new-borns and severe mental disabilities. That most certainly does not give anyone the right to kill them. The law forbids cruelty to animals. It would be very simple to legislate protection for these cases, without mentioning personhood.
I don't know ancient Hebrew law at all. This notion was given as a better interpretation of the Bible. It is the first breath of air, just after birth, of course. That's true... but in no way implies personhood. The single cell has none of the characteristics of a person... unless you wish to invoke some religious aspect. Why limit personhood to humans? My friend the Martian would not be pleased! I agree that there is a good chance that a non-religious definition of personhood would exclude new-borns and severe mental disabilities. That most certainly does not give anyone the right to kill them. The law forbids cruelty to animals. It would be very simple to legislate protection for these cases, without mentioning personhood.
That's a very significant point! If personhood came at fertilization... then one of the twins is not a person, and never can be. Which one?
