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The Question of Jake or John
(fiction, including fictional persons)
Once upon a near-future time, there was a pair of identical twin brothers named Jacques and Johnathan. Their French mother and American father agreed that one of the boys deserved to have a fine French name --but as they grew up, everyone simply called them Jake and John.
Identical twins exist in degrees of similarity; some are easy to tell apart (a mole on the skin, say), and some are very difficult to tell apart, especially if they deliberately groom and dress themselves the same way. Jake and John were the latter sort, and delighted in pulling pranks that often caused both to be punished equally, but only half as much as was deserved, because no one knew which of them was really the guilty party, and which was innocent. (We are ignoring fingerprints, footprints, and other specialized ID methods in this fiction.)
Eventually the boys became old enough to learn to drive an automobile. At first they were cautious and drove wrecklessly, but one day one of them became overconfident and drove recklessly. There was a truly terrible accident, witnessed and reported by someone who had been passed at high speed just before the wreck.
The emergency crew that reached the scene of the accident found both boys unconscious. One had a badly crushed spine and multiple broken ribs that caused significant internal organ damage; the other had a fractured skull and several relatively minor additional injuries. Both were rushed to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit. Eventually the prognosis was determined: The young man with the fractured skull was brain-dead, and the other, comatose, would never walk again and likely would be bedridden due to the internal organ damage.
Or would he? As it happened, this hospital was in a large city and had in residence a world-famous neurosurgeon, Doctor Frank N. Stine. He had been involved in determining the prognosis, and now he proposed a bold idea, that a double head transplant be performed. The good head could be attached to the good body, and eventually a complete recovery would be possible. The dead head could be attached to the ruined body, and then be given a decent burial. The case was ideal because they were identical twins, as perfectly matched donor and recipient as could be wished.
The parents, recognizing this as the best hope for their surviving son, agreed, and the surgery was performed without incident. Some weeks pass and the young man wakes from the coma. But who is that person, Jake or John?
===============
It may seem like a silly Question, but as far as the Overall Abortion Debate is concerned, the answer has huge ramifications. For abortion opponents, a human body alone suffices to qualify as a person, and a male human body that masses 100kg might have a head massing only 4kg --a 24:1 or 25:1 mass ratio (depending on how the calc is done), making the head basically ignore-able. Therefore, for abortion opponents, the Answer to that Question is, "No matter which one his head claims to be, he is actually the other one, the donor of the body."
For pro-choicers a person is a mind, and whoever the young man claims to be, that is who he is. The human body is irrelevant to the concept of personhood, and abortion is allowable because unborn humans don't have minds worth talking about. If the mind of an adult pig is measurably more capable than the mind of a human infant, yet pigs can be routinely killed because they are mere animals, not persons, and if dolphins can be declared to be persons because their minds are significantly even-more capable than pig-minds, then the barely-functional minds of unborn humans are just as much non-persons as their barely-functional bodies. That is, abortion only targets mere animals, not persons.
The situation is that simple.
This material is declared to be Public Domain, and can be freely copied/posted anywhere.
(fiction, including fictional persons)
Once upon a near-future time, there was a pair of identical twin brothers named Jacques and Johnathan. Their French mother and American father agreed that one of the boys deserved to have a fine French name --but as they grew up, everyone simply called them Jake and John.
Identical twins exist in degrees of similarity; some are easy to tell apart (a mole on the skin, say), and some are very difficult to tell apart, especially if they deliberately groom and dress themselves the same way. Jake and John were the latter sort, and delighted in pulling pranks that often caused both to be punished equally, but only half as much as was deserved, because no one knew which of them was really the guilty party, and which was innocent. (We are ignoring fingerprints, footprints, and other specialized ID methods in this fiction.)
Eventually the boys became old enough to learn to drive an automobile. At first they were cautious and drove wrecklessly, but one day one of them became overconfident and drove recklessly. There was a truly terrible accident, witnessed and reported by someone who had been passed at high speed just before the wreck.
The emergency crew that reached the scene of the accident found both boys unconscious. One had a badly crushed spine and multiple broken ribs that caused significant internal organ damage; the other had a fractured skull and several relatively minor additional injuries. Both were rushed to the hospital's Intensive Care Unit. Eventually the prognosis was determined: The young man with the fractured skull was brain-dead, and the other, comatose, would never walk again and likely would be bedridden due to the internal organ damage.
Or would he? As it happened, this hospital was in a large city and had in residence a world-famous neurosurgeon, Doctor Frank N. Stine. He had been involved in determining the prognosis, and now he proposed a bold idea, that a double head transplant be performed. The good head could be attached to the good body, and eventually a complete recovery would be possible. The dead head could be attached to the ruined body, and then be given a decent burial. The case was ideal because they were identical twins, as perfectly matched donor and recipient as could be wished.
The parents, recognizing this as the best hope for their surviving son, agreed, and the surgery was performed without incident. Some weeks pass and the young man wakes from the coma. But who is that person, Jake or John?
===============
It may seem like a silly Question, but as far as the Overall Abortion Debate is concerned, the answer has huge ramifications. For abortion opponents, a human body alone suffices to qualify as a person, and a male human body that masses 100kg might have a head massing only 4kg --a 24:1 or 25:1 mass ratio (depending on how the calc is done), making the head basically ignore-able. Therefore, for abortion opponents, the Answer to that Question is, "No matter which one his head claims to be, he is actually the other one, the donor of the body."
For pro-choicers a person is a mind, and whoever the young man claims to be, that is who he is. The human body is irrelevant to the concept of personhood, and abortion is allowable because unborn humans don't have minds worth talking about. If the mind of an adult pig is measurably more capable than the mind of a human infant, yet pigs can be routinely killed because they are mere animals, not persons, and if dolphins can be declared to be persons because their minds are significantly even-more capable than pig-minds, then the barely-functional minds of unborn humans are just as much non-persons as their barely-functional bodies. That is, abortion only targets mere animals, not persons.
The situation is that simple.
This material is declared to be Public Domain, and can be freely copied/posted anywhere.
