Explain Your Reasoning.

[Felicity]

WOW....:shock: .....That's a lot of reading....I will slog through it eventually--but WHOA....:shock: It may take a bit...

 

[FutureIncoming]

Felicity wrote: "I will slog through it eventually--but WHOA.... It may take a bit..."


I can wait. I appreciate your patience in waiting for my own reply (I half-suspect you didn't think I was ever going to .

This Message I am writing because I need to extend something in Message #535. To the stuff about biology being hardware, and your attempting to dismiss the issue, there is this stuff from Message #509:

"From various of your previous postings I acquired the impression that you do not wish to include artificial intelligences as Persons, and/or their bodies as a type of Life. But if "mentation" depends on flows and patterns of data, then the manner in which that data is represented/flows should not matter at all. If God, claimed to have no ordinary physical substance at all, is a Person, then why are neurons superior to fuzzy-logic transistors? If a not-uncommon phrase such as "the living God" makes any wierd sort of sense, then how can an operating fully-automated factory not qualify as "living" also? (Have you not heard about how specialized bacteria used in various industries are called "little factories"? Why can't the concept scale upward to the macroscopic or even the megascopic level?)"


Your posting in Message #510 referred to some of the other text that was in Message #509, completely ignoring the above paragraph. I am requesting that you no longer ignore it, and that, when you reply to Message #535, you address this part of the issue, too. You may have noticed that I have added some stress to the "regardless of physical nature" part of my signature. If we can imagine Life in interstellar dust clouds, or having silicon or plasma or subnuclear "biology", then Life associated with electronic phenomena cannot be dismissed. I already spelled that out in more detail in Message #489:

"As the next chunk of background preparation, let us examine "Life". "Life" is considered to be a difficult thing to describe (it is well-known that ordinary fire has a number of features that life-forms possess), but the process of "living" may actually be the key to the definition of "Life". That is, "Life" is able to exhibit the process of "living", so, if we first understand (A) that "Entropy" is "degree of disorderliness" (more is messier), and (B) that energy always tends to flow "downhill" from low to high Entropy, and (C) that Life always exhibits SOME degree of organization (low Entropy), THEN: The phenomenon of "living" can be described as "actively processing flows of energy so that a local region of low Entropy can be maintained and/or expanded" (expansion would include reproduction as well as simple growth, of course). This definition doesn't care about the form of mass/energy (or spiritual/metaphysical/magical energy) that is involved in "flows of energy", or what organized thing occupies the "region of low Entropy". Viral reproduction fits that defintion. Fire doesn't (no organization). Crystal growth doesn't (it's passive not active). Bacteria in stasis as spores still qualify as Life because they are ABLE to do the "living" thing, after breaking out of the spores. The definition does not restrict Life to chemical interactions, and so creatures like Hoyle's Black Cloud, Star Trek's Companion, Niven's Outsiders, Asimov's wisps, Brin's plasma blobs, or even Forwards' s nucleon-based imaginings, are all allowed. And, logically, a fully automated factory, IF even the repair systems are automated, and its products include those same repair systems, also qualifies as primitive Life (as described in the two Hogan books I mentioned)."


Your posting in Message #490 indicated that you disagreed, but you provided no detail. But such details are necessary, if you want to convince people that only certain kinds of non-carbon-based phenomena can be called "Life".

 

[Felicity]

Felicity wrote: "I will slog through it eventually--but WHOA.... It may take a bit..."


I can wait. I appreciate your patience in waiting for my own reply (I half-suspect you didn't think I was ever going to .

To be honest...I was beginning to wonder......


and second...Aaaarrrghhh...don't add anymore!!!! I cut and pasted your posts into a word document so I could read it better...IT'S NINE PAGES LONG--NOT INCLUDING YOUR SIGNATURE MESSAGE EVERY TIME....(over 4,000 words--almost 25,000 characters...dude-- I'm on overload and now I have page 10 to cut and past and I haven't even begun to read the previous 9). You had a week to write it...gimme a chance:mrgreen:

 

[FutureIncoming]

Felicity wrote: "Aaaarrrghhh...don't add anymore!!!!"


Well, actually I wasn't going to add any more, but then this highly relevant news item came to my attention:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9516845/
As you can see from the article, scientists are taking another step along the path of designing technologies that work in the same way that biological systems work (add that to "fuzzy logic" and "neural networks", and ...). So, in the Incoming Future, some technologies are going to be mimic-ing Life to the extent that they will be indistinguishable from Life in terms of fundamental definitions and functionality. Copying the functional details of the human brain, allowing the existence of an Artificial Intelligence having equivalent mind-power and person-hood qualifications, is only a matter of time. You're going to have to get used to it, and accept the inevitable logical consequences, too... ("Minds cannot be required to come into existence just because some of their fundamental hardware happens to exist.")

 

[FutureIncoming]

Well, folks, another item has come to my attention, such that I cannot resist posting here about it.

In Message #526 Felicity wrote something I'm going to paraphrase:
"evidence of the uniqueness of man {is} reason for preserving {him}"


The paraphrase relates to a discussion regarding "Objective Value" and "uniqueness". I think the paraphrase does not depart from the spirit of Felicity's opinion, and while I might be able to find another quote somewhere that more exactly states what I paraphrased, and more directly specifies Objective Value, I think it will take more time than it is worth, when the paraphrase should do.

OK, well, see this:
Here is a somewhat unique thing:
2 7 6
9 5 1
4 3 8
This is the "3x3 magic square" Add up the numbers in any row or column or even diagonal, and the sum is 15. This is the "only" way to arrange 9 numbers in a 3x3 grid, to accomplish that task. Note I put quotes around "only":
4 9 2
3 5 7
8 1 6
Mathematically, this arrangement is identical to the previous arrangement, because the relative positions of the numbers are unchanged with respect to their neigboring numbers. The entire grid has been rotated clockwise. Rotations and mirror-reflections do not count, when determining whether or not something like this is unique. So, not counting the rotations and reflections, there really is only one way to arrange the 9 numbers to make a magic square.

Nevertheless, the 3x3 magic square is less than totally unique. It is possible to arrange the numbers 1-16 in a 4x4 grid, to create a magic square. More, there are also a lot of different ways to do it (hundreds if I recall right). And there are even more ways to arrange the numbers 1-25 in a 5x5 grid, to make a magic square. And so on, for 6x6, 7x7, 8x8, ... magic squares. So, while the 3x3 grid is somewhat unique, magic squares are really rather common.

I should mention that a 2x2 magic square is an impossibility, which you can quickly confirm for yourself. And the 1x1 "magic square" consists solely of the numeral "1", and thus is trivial, uninteresting and discounted much as rotations and reflections are discounted.

However! HERE is something that is REALLY unique:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MagicHexagon.html
Not counting rotations and reflections and the trivial "1" hexagon, there is just exactly only this one magic hexagon. Period. A truly unique thing in all of Mathematics.

According to Felicity, this uniqueness means that the magic hexagon should have some sort of Objective Value. But if you are not interested in math, then to you it may not even have any Subjective Value. And thus is exposed the hole in Felicity's claim, that the uniquess of humans makes them Objectively valuable.

 

[Felicity]

Ok...I've read through the portion that dealt with the personhood defined by Nature of the species argument I presented.

There is ONE overriding assumption that you dismiss as a red herring but it is actually the CRUX of the argument I presented. You specifically said, "here I see you are trying to be clever with words. "inherent capacity" means "actually-existing capacity".....The existing capacity of a young fetus is far far less than the existing capacity of an adult. There are NO words that can assign adult capacity to a fetus without referencing "potential". And referencing "species" is just a red herring. The species, after all, includes brainless humans of zero capacity..."

You argue that a species cannot be a person--one is group and one is an individual. Fine--that is not what I said. I said personHOOD is defined by the NATURE of the SPECIES. It's not species = person...it's nature = person. All that stuff you said arguing the definition presented is faulty based on "defining traits of personhood" by how they "are tied to brainpower" are missing the issue of the definition--the nature of the beast. I know I've said it a million times...I’m not sure how you could miss that.

Personhood is defined by (the philosophical term) nature.
The nature of what? The species.


When you define it that way--all that the species is--makes it a marker for defining personhood...yes...there may be conflicting traits inherent in the species as you point out--nonetheless--the nature of the species includes those traits--though not every example of the species will DEMONSTRATE that trait. I may NEVER lie--but I have the capacity to lie. I may never give my life for another, but I have the capacity of doing such. I may never know many things...but I have the capacity to learn them. I may never do a back flip--but I have the capacity of the ability. Just because I can't--doesn't mean by my nature I don't have the capacity for something. That is the "uniqueness" I referenced...the unique NATURE of man which has many things in common with other species...but some very unique qualities that you do not deny.

So when you say "The species, after all, includes brainless humans of zero capacity..." it should rather read "zero ability" not "capacity" because as a member of the species, the nature of the species has that capacity--though some individuals cannot express that capacity. Definition of Personhood = Nature of the thing in question--eg. human nature.

This is the FUNDAMENTAL error in your understanding of the definition I gave--and honestly...I can't express it any better than this article I am going to link you to...It explains, I think, very clearly your misconceptions and gives the examples I think you are looking for. Please read it to understand the philosophy and the way I am describing personhood.

http://www.cbhd.org/resources/bioethics/beckwith_2001-11-19.htm

 

[FutureIncoming]

To Felicity:
However you twist the words, you are still trying to say that a fetus EXISTS WITH traits that it very obviously does not possess. THAT is YOUR fundamental error. You wrote that nature=person, but that equality doesn't work backward either (person=nature, NOT!), and so you still are specifying a FALSE equality.

Consider this. Some people have difficulty accepting the fact that the human BODY is not 100% animal (you aren't one of them, I know). It is as if they think the few physical traits we possess, which distinguish us from all the other animals out there, makes us non-animals. Well, that argument doesn't work because, for example, a zebra has a few physical traits that distinguishes it from all the other animals out there -- and a zebra is nevertheless still an animal.

Well, somewhere along the evolutionary history of Genus Homo, mental traits were acquired that allow us to call ourselves persons, more than mere animals. The data indicates that the first hominids merely had the walking-upright physical trait, about two million years ago. We cannot call them people because they had brains of chimpanzee-size. It is possible that even though anatomically modern humans appeared in the fossil record more than 100,000 years ago, even THEY were not people (despite being able to make stone tools and handle fire). The evidence of modern mental abilities -- artworks and other culture-related artifacts (like simple flutes) -- does not begin to appear until about 50,000 years ago. That means for more than 50,000 years it is likely that there were animals-and-ONLY-clever-animals walking around who were physically indistinguishable from today's humans-in-the-street (assuming equal nudity and cleanliness), before some essential element of brainpower began to exist, that spawned art and culture (and politics and claims of "right to life" .

Finally, why do you ignore the NATURE OF HUMAN GROWTH? Although this has been somewhat misinterpreted as mimic-ing the evolutionary history of the species (from tadpole-shape to amphibian-shape to lemur-shape to human-shape), there is certainly no misinterpretation at all in observing that the capacity of a brain is broadly associated with the quantity of brain tissue. For the first few weeks there is basically NO brain tissue in a fetus. And despite the amount of brainpower that a human possesses at birth, this is still INSUFFICIENT for processing symbol-abstraction, a key part of your definition of person-hood. (Experiments find no understanding of symbol-abstraction until the human brain grows, and continues to develop capacity, for more than 2 years after birth.)


I will study the "bioethics" essay. Any flaws I find, you will be seeing posted here. (eventually)

 

[Donkey1499]

Hmmm... abortion can be a tricky subject. I am against it, but if someone outside my family wants an abortion, fine - I won't try to stop them. I just don't want my Family members having abortions because it is against the religious beliefs my family has.

Life, in my opinion, begins when the cells begin to divide. Because are cells not living things? I believe they are.

 

[FutureIncoming]

To Felicity:
+++
I have no issues with the first couple of paragraphs of the Bioethics Essay. However, in referring to a certain Federal panel of experts, the eassy states:
+++
***
But what is remarkable is how the panel attempted to sidestep the issue of personhood, apparently believing that it was possible to make policy without addressing it. In the first 300 words of the report's executive summary, the panel writes that
"it conducted its deliberations in terms that were independent of a particular religious or philosophical perspective."
Yet, the panel supported federal funding of research on the preimplanted embryo on the basis that
"it does not have the same moral status as infants and children" because it lacks "developmental individuation . . ., the lack of even the possibility of sentience and most other qualities considered relevant to the moral status of persons, and the very high rate of natural mortality at this stage."
Clearly, despite its earlier disclaimer that it would propose recommendations "independent" of any perspective, the panel affirmed (and argued for) a policy that is, by its own admission, dependent on a philosophical perspective, for it was employed by the panel to distinguish between those beings who are and who are not members of the moral community of persons. This is not a neutral perspective.
***
+++
OK, SOME ATTEMPT TO MISLEAD THE READER IS PRESENT THERE. Compare the panel's "independent of a particular religious or philosophical perspective" with the essay-author's "'independent' of ANY perspective". Tsk, tsk! Suppose the panel chose an OBJECTIVE perspective? Wouldn't that be independent of any self-serving religious or philosophical perspective? Yet the essay-author wants the reader to believe that any perspective at all, including the objective, cannot qualify as a "neutral perspective" -- when in fact the ONLY neutral perspective IS the objective perspective.

So, DID the panel choose the objective perspective? To some extent at least, YES. It is an objective fact that the preimplantation embryo "lacks even the possibility of sentience" {the word "now" should be assumed here, because we all know that it does have the possibility of sentience later}. It is also is an objective fact that the preimplantation embryo has a very high rate of natural mortality. (I could wish for an actual rate-figure here. Suppose I arbitrarily pick 45%.) That means the average experimented-upon embryo would have had a good chance (45%, see?) of dying anyway. And while the panel doesn't say so in the material quoted by the essay author, it is an objective fact that embryos are easy to make more of, so that there can be a plentiful supply of both picked-for-experiment and picked-for-pregnancy preimplantation embryos, in spite of their natural mortality rate.

But some subjective things are stated by the panel, also. For example, the phrase "developmental individuation" is not well defined (at least by the essay author) If it means "sense of self" then, OK, objectively, the embryo obviously hasn't got it (self-awareness takes brainpower that does exist at all at this stage). But whether or not the phrase means "sense of self", or something else, is subjective! Next, the phrase "most other qualities considered relevant to the moral status of persons" is rather less objective than it should be. In particular, "considered relevant" is absolutely a subjective determination. We know full well that some persons claim that "human life", all by itself, is "considered relevant to the moral status of persons", regardless of how developed or undeveloped that life may be. And this is precisely why my Challenge concerns defining "person" in a way that can be true of non-humans such as God. A LIST, such as "A person is any human, any God, any Wookie, any Klingon, etc, ..." has the twin problems of being never-ending, and not-applicable to some just-met bunch of aliens who are not-yet on the List, but should be. Getting at the fundamental OBJECTIVE essence of Person-ness drops parochial stuff like "human life" from the equation altogether, and would work just fine for all the as-yet-unencountered alien Persons throughout the Universe. Including sufficiently advanced Artificial Intelligences.

Getting back to the panel, it obviously had a dilemma regarding HOW TO SAY that preimplantation embryos fail to be equal to persons. As the essay-author indicates -- but not as explicitly as I'm saying here -- this cannot logically be done without (1) first providing a definition of Person and (2) showing that {fill in blank} fails to qualify. I can agree, therefore, with the essay-author's conclusion here that the panel failed to be entirely neutral in its perspective. I just don't agree with the way the essay-author went about it.

(more to follow, as combing with fine teeth takes time)
+++

 

[Donkey1499]

Animals as persons? LOL. That's funny. Although I do treat my dog like a person. He even sits on his butt instead of his haunches.

God is a Supernatural being, not a mere person.

 

[Felicity]

To Felicity:
However you twist the words, you are still trying to say that a fetus EXISTS WITH traits that it very obviously does not possess. THAT is YOUR fundamental error. You wrote that nature=person, but that equality doesn't work backward either (person=nature, NOT!), and so you still are specifying a FALSE equality.

I certainly DO think it works both ways...--perhaps i should have been more specific that I wasn't meaning "individuals" when i said person, rather the state of personhood...

nature = personhood
If the nature of the species demonstrates with it's capacity to reason, have self will and all that jazz in the "list" (as well as any other myriad traits) the species demonstrates personhood.

personhood = nature
If the species demonstrates personhood, those traits of the "list" will be found in the nature of that species.

I see the equals symbol might be misleading in what I meant--but anyway...It should be read "particular nature demonstrates personhood" and "personhood demonstrates particular nature." Is that more clear?

 

[FutureIncoming]

To Felicity:
I don't see much to disagree with in the BioEthics Essay with respect to what it says about the Courts' statements. However, I don't know that the essay covered everything that the Courts have stated; it is possible that the essay only focussed on the things it could find a way to complain about.

One thing is obvious to me, though, is that the Courts made a mistake in using the phrase "when life begins". From my very first posting in this Thread, I've been saying that the real issue is about "when life MATTERS" -- and I've been tying that to the topic of Person-hood. There are two aspects to this issue. One is Subjective and one is Objective.

For the Subjective aspect, consider an average home-owner, who is likely to say that "the life of a dandelion in my back yard does not matter at all", and this would logically follow at least in part because nobody considers a dandelion to be a person. On the other hand, a homeowner who likes "dandelion wine" may think that dandelions growing in the back yard DO matter somewhat, even if that human also thinks that dandelions aren't persons. Thus we can divide the homeowners into "pro-choice" and "pro-life" groups, a Subjective distinction with respect to "aborting" dandelions from the yard.

For the Objective aspect, a definition of Person is crucial. Without one, simply declaring an unborn human to be, or not to be, a person, becomes a purely Subjective distinction, exactly equivalent to the dandelion scenario. Only a definition of Person can change the Subjective to the Objective, because it is commonly accepted that Persons matter, while non-persons generally don't.

Next, I did see a reference made to the Fourteenth Amendment, in which supposedly unborn humans, if EVEN ARBITRARILY granted personhood status, would gain various protections. So I looked it up to refresh my memory, and had to laugh!!!
14th amendment, 1st section (the only section relevant to the abortion debate):
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Do you see the funniness? Do you see the SLOPPY legalese that is going to cause no end of argumentation over what the "framers of the Amendment really meant"? Here is a clue:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any {person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof} of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any {person born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof} within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Obviously, the pro-choice logic is going to be that the first sentence defines which persons get protection, and the other sentences containing "person" were stripped-down to reduce cumbersomeness of phrasing. And so the unborn, EVEN IF PERSONS, get no protection.

HAW! HAW!! HAW!!!

OK, after rolling for a while on the floor, I can get back to the generally known fact that "the law is a ass". It makes statements that are often every bit as arbitrary as the statements of the preachers. I understand that some states still have laws against witchcraft on the books, with an associated death penalty. ARE YOU READY FOR MORE LAUGHTER?

See that (paraphrased) "deprive any person of life without due process of law"? A pregnant pro-choice woman need only go to a witchcraft-law state and accuse the fetus of witchcraft, in the form of "using evil selfish means to cause vomiting, backaches, indisposition, calcium loss, and sundry other ills". GUILTY, obviously, so one abortion, coming up!

HAW! HAW!! HAW!!!

I predict that if Roe vs. Wade is overturned on definition-of-Person-and-the-14th-Amendment grounds, then various pro-choice-friendly states will deliberately pass laws that can, through due process, sentence all unrepentingly selfish unborn persons to death, whenever charges are brought against them. I agree that a whole CHAIN of stupid-as-a-ass laws are involved here. BETTER to avoid arbitrary definitions of Person, therefore. BEST to obtain a Universally accurate definition of Person. Because then, so far as the evidence suggests (yes, I know that Felicity disputes this, in a debate still-ongoing), no unborn human will ever qualify as a Person, and none of the preceding nonsense, however funny (or unfunny), need happen.


{more to follow; I see you posted something while I was working on this}

 

[FutureIncoming]

Felicity wrote: "I see the equals symbol might be misleading in what I meant--but anyway...It should be read "particular nature demonstrates personhood" and "personhood demonstrates particular nature." Is that more clear?"


No, that doesn't work, either. You are basically on record as saying words to the effect that "particular nature DEFINES personhood" --where "particular nature" is a list of certain traits. And therefore, personhood can only exist when such traits exist as the-definition-gets-matched. Which once again certainly excludes the young fetus, and likely excludes all unborn humans.


{major interruption coming up; hours will pass before my next post}

 

[Donkey1499]

Did you people ever notice that animals don't have abortions? Even if they've been raped? I can explain that very easily. All creatures on this Earth (ALL OF THEM; that means humans as well) exist to keep the species populated. Even God told Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply.

That is why I think that abortion is useless. Take an example from our furry, scaly, feathery friends. You can learn alot from nature. ANd we are not so different from them either. Now you may say "But we're smarter than them, we have cars." But then ppl go and crash their cars. But, why is it that a squirrel can survive in the middle of nowhere for years without any easily accessable food and water, but if you put a modern human in that situation they die within days/weeks? Who is the intelligent one now? That is why I also think that Wilderness Survival should be taught in public schools.

 

[Felicity]

Felicity wrote: "I see the equals symbol might be misleading in what I meant--but anyway...It should be read "particular nature demonstrates personhood" and "personhood demonstrates particular nature." Is that more clear?"


No, that doesn't work, either. You are basically on record as saying words to the effect that "particular nature DEFINES personhood" --where "particular nature" is a list of certain traits. And therefore, personhood can only exist when such traits exist as the-definition-gets-matched. Which once again certainly excludes the young fetus, and likely excludes all unborn humans.


{major interruption coming up; hours will pass before my next post}

I honestly don't see the distinction you are making here...the particular nature must include the "list" to define personhood....yes....unborn humans have human nature by virtue of their identification as of the human species...the human species has a nature that includes all the elements of the "list".....ummmm...I really don't see your point here.

 

[Felicity]

Did you people ever notice that animals don't have abortions? Even if they've been raped? I can explain that very easily. All creatures on this Earth (ALL OF THEM; that means humans as well) exist to keep the species populated. Even God told Adam and Eve to go forth and multiply.

That is why I think that abortion is useless. Take an example from our furry, scaly, feathery friends. You can learn alot from nature. ANd we are not so different from them either. Now you may say "But we're smarter than them, we have cars." But then ppl go and crash their cars. But, why is it that a squirrel can survive in the middle of nowhere for years without any easily accessable food and water, but if you put a modern human in that situation they die within days/weeks? Who is the intelligent one now? That is why I also think that Wilderness Survival should be taught in public schools.

Hey Donkey...You're an A$$....:lol: ....(Since the above is only your 7th, I just wanted to be the first to say it even if I don't really believe it.....I hope you have a sense of humor )

 

[FutureIncoming]

Felicity wrote: "I honestly don't see the distinction you are making here...the particular nature must include the "list" to define personhood....yes....unborn humans have human nature by virtue of their identification as of the human species...the human species has a nature that includes all the elements of the "list""


The crux is this part of what you wrote: "unborn humans have human nature by virtue of their identification as of the human species" -- Unborn humans only have a SUBSET of the complete human nature. They have a complete set of genes, a completely animal body, and some other things, but nevertheless, they also most definitely lack many of the things that are part of the totality of human nature, like lots of different kinds of mental abilities, the specific things (on your list!) which allow a human to qualify as a person instead of ONLY a mere animal. Shucks, during the very early stages of pregnancy, unborn humans don't even have beating hearts, a rather important aspect of human nature, don't you think?

============
To Donkey1499, who wrote: "God is a Supernatural being, not a mere person."

If God is AT LEAST a person, then God possesses the same traits of person-ness that any other person possesses. Any other traits that God possesses are irrelevant to this discussion. So, what exactly are those traits, which specify person-ness, for both God and ordinary mortals? {Remember, if you insist that God is not a person, then that means some futuristic madman might invent a supernatural God Gun, and cause God to cease existing (if you believe anything is possible, then you have to add the preceding to the list of possibilities) -- and nobody should complain, because: "I just eliminated a bothersome non-person," says the madman, "and we all know that non-persons have been fair game ever since we started walking the Earth." Of course, if you think that God qualifies at least as a person, then logically the madman should be stopped, because we grant "right to life" to persons...and so I ask again, what are the traits that define person-ness for entities as diverse as God and mortals?}

=============
To Felicity (again):
There is some illogic (which I'm surprised you didn't point out, but maybe you were merely too shocked to think what to say) in that stuff in my Message #547, about witchcraft. It is my understanding (NOTE to Wiccans: this has nothing to do with you!) that those conventional anti-witchcraft laws are based on the assumption that a witch makes a deal with evil forces to acquire power. Well, if a fetus has no brainpower, then how can it make such a deal? On the other hand, if you make up a List of Evil Actions, and even add to it lesser stuff like the Seven Deadly Sins, and then step back and look for a pattern, you will find that every single evil is actually just plain ordinary selfishness in action. (Yes, to the extent that abortion can be called evil, selfishness is involved there, too.) It might be pointed out that evils usually involve EXCESS selfishness, a quantity that is difficult to define, but which anyone can recognize when finding self on the short end of the stick. SOME selfishness is actually considered to be OK; after all, EVERYONE comes naturally equipped with a certain amount of selfishness -- feeding your own face is a selfish act, see? In ordinary dealings between persons, deals are often made. These deals, whether the following fact is recognized during the deal-making or not, almost always involve COMPROMISE of selfish desires. The employer wants maxium work for minimum pay, and the employee wants to do minimum work for maximum pay -- and they reach a compromise (the preceding ignores additional factors like competiton of workers for the job). OK, well, I've mentioned in other messages something about how the fetus is inherently totally selfish about its needs, and (due to lack of brainpower) we can now see that it is not in the least going to compromise that selfishness one whit. This therefore can fall into the category of "excess selfishness", or "evil"--even without any "deal-making with evil forces". The selfishness thing alone is why I specifically included the word "evil" in that witchcraft-stuff in Message #547; I merely thought it deserved an explanation.

Nevertheless, the illogic that I also pointed out above remains, and one other thing I wrote in Message #547 was that various pro-choice states would find a way to apply due process of law to the selfish fetus, to yield a death penalty. There IS something that can fit this bill, even without witchcraft nonsense. Consider: Suppose you are walking along minding your own business, and some guy jumps you and hauls you off, and smuggles you out of the country, and then sells you into slavery. The person who BUYS you as a slave is doing nothing as despicable as the person who puts you into the slavery condition in the first place. I am not sure of what any old laws on the books have to say are the penalties for convicted slavers (as opposed to mere convicted slave-owners), but considering the evil-ness of what slavers have done all through History (like murdering people who resist, for starters), the death penalty is not an unreasonable option. Now, remember that the Constitution defines slavery as "involuntary servitude" in the Thirteenth Amendment, and forbids it except through due process of law. Well, when a woman doesn't want to be pregnant, then if she happens to BE pregnant, then that means the fetus is putting her into a state of involuntary servitude! And definitely not through any due process of law invoked by the fetus. So that qualifies the fetus as being a slaver, and therefore likely subject to the death penalty IF charges are brought against it. THIS logic is pretty much iron-clad, compared to that witchcraft stuff. And so I tend to think that if the fetus is declared to be a Person, and then the Fourteenth Amendment is invoked to protect it, then what will happen is that pro-choice states will enact anti-slaving laws derived from the Thirteenth Amendment, and abortions will continue pretty much as before, with a slight formality added to charge the fetus/Person with slaving, a quick and inevitable guilty verdict, and a final sentencing to death.

NOTE TO ALL: THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH IS BEING EXCLUDED FROM COPYRIGHT BY THE AUTHOR. FEEL FREE TO EDIT AND POST ELSEWHERE, AS YOU PLEASE. A GOOD PLACE TO SEND IT MIGHT BE ANY NEW SUPREME COURT JUSTICES, AND ANY LAWYERS AND POLITICIANS WHO DEFEND FREEDOM OVER SLAVERY.

 

[FutureIncoming]

+++
With respect to the BioEthics Essay that I'm studying and commenting upon, the next section has a heading titled "Not All Human Beings Are Persons?", including the question mark. I do not disagree with any of the essay-author's descriptions here, regarding various pro-choice statements about distinguishing persons and humans. There is one interesting thing in the final paragraph of this section of the essay, so I will quote it below:
+++
***
Although these criteria differ from each other in important ways, they all have one thing in common: each maintains that if and only if an entity functions in a certain way are we warranted in calling that entity a person. Defenders of these criteria argue that once a human being, whether born or unborn, acquires a certain function or functions--whether it is brain waves, rationality, sentience, etc.-- it is then and only then that a person actually exists. Those who defend these personhood criteria typically make a distinction between "being a human" and "being a person." They argue that although fetuses are members of the species homo sapiens, and in that sense are human, they are not truly persons until they fulfill a particular set of personhood criteria.
***
+++
The interesting thing is, "each maintains that if and only if an entity functions in a certain way are we warranted in calling that entity a person" --AS IF the essay-author is aware that we might need to be able to apply those criteria to other entities than humans. As a related subsidiary UNMENTIONED interesting thing, there is the point that I have been stressing in my Messages here in this Thread, about the whole reason for having a set of "personhood" criteria: To be able to accurately distinguish persons from mere animals, anwhere, anywhen, in any Universe. Not having read further along in the essay yet, as I'm writing this, I can hardly wait to see how the essay-author is going to equate all humans with person-hood in a way that cannot also be applied to animals.
+++

 

[FutureIncoming]

+++
OK, now I've read through the first few paragraphs of the next section of the BioEthics essay, which are titled "Problems with Personhood Criteria", and now I also see the game that the author is playing. Tsk, tsk! Here is the first paragraph:
+++
***
Although functional definitions of personhood may tell us some conditions that are sufficient to say that a being is a person, they are not adequate in revealing to us all the conditions that are sufficient for a particular being to be called a person. For example, when a human being is asleep, unconscious, and temporarily comatose, she is not functioning as a person as defined by some personhood criteria. Nevertheless, most people would reject the notion that a human being is not a person while in any of these states. In other words, while personhood criteria, such as the ones presented by Warren can tell us that a being is a person, these criteria are not adequate to declare a being a non-person: The exercise of rational thought tells us that a being is a person; when that person is sleeping, and thus is not exercising rational thought, that lack of exercise of the thought function does not make her a non-person at that time. Consequently, it seems more consistent with our moral intuitions to say that personhood is not something that arises when certain functions are in place, but rather is something that grounds these functions, whether or not they are ever actualized in the life of a human being. Thus, defining personhood strictly in terms of function is inadequate.
***
+++
The essay-author is deliberately focussing on "function" instead of "ability". Every sentence in that paragraph is perfectly sensible, and I can even agree with each of them, but the fact remains that the entire thing is stilted. That is, a given thing might not be functioning right now, but if if can function later, then it has the ABILITY to function BOTH right now and later. Yet the essay-author very carefully chooses to use the word "function", as if "person" had never been defined in terms of anything else. EVEN THOUGH one of the definitions quoted by the author in the previous essay section DID specify "ability" as part of the criteria:
+++
***
"Still others, such as L. W. Sumner, 13 hold a more moderate position and argue that human personhood does not arrive until the fetus is sentient, the ability to feel and sense as a conscious being."
***
+++
I reiterate: That ability to feel and sense does not go away just because the person might be asleep or in a coma, just as the ability for a light bulb to be turned on does not go away just because it is currently not located in an appropriate light fixture. Only the FUNCTIONING of the ability goes away in those cases. Actual person-related abilities only go away with death or brain-death or significant brain damage, and do not arrive until the brain has developed sufficiently. Nevertheless, the essay-author focusses on the functioning and not on the ability, and I think I may now be able to claim that the author does so only to be able to reach a conclusion that is otherwise invalid. Let's see; I'll skip over the first examples involving comas and go to the the one that compares someone in a deep coma to a fetus:
+++
***
Suppose you were to conclude that Uncle Jed's life is valuable while in the coma because at one time prior to the coma he functioned as a person and probably will do so in the future after coming out of the coma. But this would be a mistake. For we can change the story a bit and say that when Uncle Jed awakens from the coma he loses virtually all his memories and knowledge including his ability to speak a language, engage in rational thought, and have a self-concept. It turns out that while in the coma he was in the exact same position as the standard fetus, for he had the same capacities as the fetus. He would still literally be the same person he was before the coma but he would be more like he was before he had a "past." He would have the natural inherent capacity to speak a language, engage in rational thought, and have a self-concept, but he would have to develop and learn them all over again in order for these capacities to result, as they did before, in actual abilities.
***
+++
NO, HE DOES NOT "have the same capacities as the fetus". Just look at this from another paragraph quoted above: "personhood is not something that arises when certain functions are in place, but rather is something that grounds these functions, whether or not they are ever actualized". NOW you can see that the difference between Jed and the fetus is that Jed's brainpower, which is THE "something" behind all personhood-defining functions, is still there, with lots and lots of (not being used) EXISTING capacity. Meanwhile, the young fetus still almost entirely lacks a brain (and it happens that the fetal brain isn't even connected to the rest of the nervous system until the 26th week of pregnancy or later, according to Message #181 this Thread). The fetus certainly has insufficient existing capacity of brainpower to support the ability to function in ways that would qualify it as a person.

I will now go a step further than the essay author, and consider that Jed's brain might be so damaged that critical capacities were utterly lost. In this case (and excluding regeneration technology), because we know that brain damage tends to be permanent, it would be logical for us to say that Jed-the-person is gone. Only his human-animal body is still there. Jed-the-animal loses various rights that Jed-the-person had. Does Jed-the-animal deserve death? No, not any more than any other ordinary animal deserves death. But if death happens to occur, it's not a big deal. Jed-the-person is ALREADY dead.

And now, to go even further; let's add advanced regeneration technology to the picture. Jed-the-animal grows brand-new brain tissue and once again acquires the capacities and abilities for functioning as a person. The key question is, (which the essay-author raised with respect to mere sleep and comas), "Is this "new" Jed-the-person the same as the original Jed-the-person?" For the simple sleep/coma cases, we have plenty of evidence that the answer is "Yes", but THIS situation is unparalleled in prior experience. We cannot say "Yes" for certainty here, and in fact there is pretty good reason to think the answer is "No". Remember how in previous Messages I likened regrowth to "twinning" phenomena? Well, let's start with a simple example of losing one's thumb, and regenerating it. Is the fingerprint pattern on the new thumb going to be identical with the pattern that the old thumb possessed? Why are fingerprints unique per person, anyway (even twins' prints are different)? Because the pattern ultimately derives from the particular positions of certain cells deep below the skin-surface. If you happen to lose several layers of skin off your thumb (ouch!), then after it heals, you will find that the thumbprint is the same as before, because that deep layer of cells was not lost. But if you lose the whole thumb and regrow it, the entire underlying structure has to be rebuilt, along with the surface skin cells. It is therefore likely that your new thumbprint will be different from the old, in the same way that twins' thumbprints are different. WELL, THEN, what about the fact that the brain consists of HUGE numbers of nerves all wired together in a tremendously complex 3-dimensional arrangement? Do you think that if a chunk of brain tissue is lost and regrown, exactly the same 3-dimensional neural wiring pattern is going to be reconstructed, as originally existed? HAH! Which means, to whatever extent the essense of a person depends on the way a brain is wired, the new Jed-the-person CANNOT be expected to be identical to the old Jed-the-person. We can expect as much similarity as a twin, and probably even more, due to memories not lost in sections of the brain not destroyed. But we cannot expect the original identity to be perfectly restored. We should be prepared to consider this Jed to be a new person.

Finally, consider this: If the restored Jed is actually a diferent person than the old, then WAS IT NECESSARY to perform the restoration? We might agree that some experimentation is very much needed, to FIND OUT if persons can be restored after major brain damage. But if we find out that a new person is always the result, then IS that new person necessary? Let's not quibble about how practical and desirable it might be, for the new Jed to get up and take charge of the old Jed's life (and what if he doesn't want to, hey???). Let's only consider necessity. Because, if it is not always necessary to obtain a new Jed (or whoever), then you are agreeing with something I've written before: "Minds cannot be required to come into existence just because some of their fundamental hardware happens to exist." Which means abortion is not wrong.

{I may not now need to examine the BioEthics essay further, because I now know that the author stilted the logic to allow the author's concept of person-ness to be presented. However, I also know that that concept was why you asked me to look at the essay, so we'll see what I have to say about it in another Message.}
+++

 

[FutureIncoming]

+++
This paragraph in the BioEthics essay (and I'm also copying the first sentence of the next) is obviously designed to lead the reader astray (or, rather, toward the author's conclusion). Dissection follows.
+++
***
Consider one more illustration. Imagine that there are two newborn twins, Larry and Ervin. Larry attains self-consciousness and then lapses into a coma for eight years, after which he will come out. Ervin is born in a coma, never attaining self-consciousness, and will come out of it the same moment as Larry. The only difference between Larry and Ervin is one of function--the former attained self-consciousness whereas the latter did not. Suppose one argues that it is permissible to kill Ervin but not Larry the day before they are set to come out of the coma. But this seems absurd. The difference between Larry and Ervin is functional only, not a difference in essence or nature, and thus not morally relevant, precisely the same kind of difference between the fetus and the five-year old. So, the unborn are not potential persons, but human persons with great potential.

Consequently, what is crucial morally is the being of a person, not his or her functioning.
***
+++
Again the essay-author focuses on function and ignores ability. Because the author chose to use TWINS in that example, it should be an obvious fact that the example grants both with the brainpower, the ABILITY for self-consciousness, even if only one functionally exhibited it after birth. When the essay-author writes, "The difference between Larry and Ervin is functional only, not a difference in essence or nature, and thus not morally relevant" --a fact is being stated, certainly, not the least because "essence or nature" includes ABILITY. The conclusion of the paragraph does not then logically follow (because "between the fetus and the five-year old", the fetus does not have the brainpower/ability of the five-year old), and neither does the first sentence of the next paragraph logically follow. That is, the essay-author is trying to get the reader to believe that the only possible alternative to a functional definition of "person" involves "being". WRONG.
+++

{I'm not sure I need to continue, since it may be safe to assume that all the rest of the essay depends on logical fault described above. What do you say, Felicity?}

 

[FutureIncoming]

I'm writing this Message just in case anyone out there wants to confuse "ability" with "potential". Consider this question, "Can you shoot the President?"
Let's break that down into lesser questions.
"Do you have an eye?"
"Can you see a target?"
"Do you have a hand?"
"Is your hand strong enough to hold the weight of a gun?"
"Is your hand steady enough to maintain the aiming of a gun at a target?"
"Are you able to pull a gun's trigger while holding the gun's weight and aiming?"
---If the answers to these questions are Yes, then it should be clear that you have the ability to shoot the President, and I didn't even ask whether or not you had access to a gun! (Because guns are common, and the ability to acquire one depends only on how the Second Amendment is interpreted.)

All right, in military parlance, one of the purposes of Military Intelligence (when the phrase isn't an oxymoron) is to do "threat assessment". This always involves analyzing abiltities moreso than potentials. Just about every fetus has the potential to shoot the President, after it grows an eye and grows a hand and grows a brain and develops physical strength and develops hand/eye coordination -- but none of that matters to a threat-assessment team. ABILITY is what matters. NOR DO INTENTIONS MATTER to a threat-assessment team. It is well known that people can have different intentions on different days, or even during different minutes, after all.

So, why is the Secret Service so nervously protective of the President? Because more than a hundred million Americans have the ability to shoot that person, of course!

Now, with respect to prior Messages here about a certain BioEthics essay, where "functioning" is falsely given greater importance than "ability", you can now perhaps see the nonsense in that. Because if someone is actively functioning/shooting the President, it merely means that that person is simply proving that the ability exists in that person. By no means does it imply that the ability does not exist in millions of others.

Therefore, an ability-based definition should be workable, to accurately distinguish persons from animals. Any objections?

 

[Fantasea]

Therefore, an ability-based definition should be workable, to accurately distinguish persons from animals. Any objections?

All of your keystrokes notwithstanding, I haven't yet come across anyone who wasn't able to accurately distinguish persons from animals. Have you?

 

[Ima Troll]

i believe that abortion is completely immoral, because it is murder; except in the context of biblical mass genocide; then its okay

 

[Technocratic_Utilitarian]

I never saw a troll before. They are so cute.

 

[Ima Troll]

I never saw a troll before. They are so cute.

thank you for saying that im cute; but how do you know if youve never seen me?