Moderator: Dictators in Training
Harrison wrote:Yay another reference to abortion I can make people look stupid upon.
Mindia wrote:Yes Kizzy, and if given the opportunity I would love to SPIT in your face right now, you fucking PIG.
Araby wrote:I like her, she's someone I have a lot of respect for. I got her book for my dad for Christmas, he and I differ in our political views, him being farther right than myself, so I thought it would be cute to get that book for him from me, hehe.
I'm reading it when he's done, and I think I'll gather a ton of much-needed information from her, she's got her shit together.
The question which we must answer in order to produce a satisfactory solution to the problem of the moral status of abortion is this: How are we to define the moral community, the set of beings with full and equal moral rights, such that we can decide whether a human fetus is a member of this community or not? What sort of entity, exactly, has the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Jefferson attributed these rights to all men If so, then we arrive, first, at Noonan's problem of defining what makes a being human, and, second, at the equally vital question which Noonan does not consider, namely, What reason is there for identifying the moral community with the set of all human beings, in whatever way we have chosen to define that term?
1. On the Definition of "Human"
One reason why this vital second question is so frequently overlooked in the debate over the moral status of abortion is that the term "human" has two distinct, but not often distinguished, senses. This fact results in a slide of meaning, which serves to conceal the fallaciousness of the traditional argument that since (1) it is wrong to kill innocent human beings, and (2) fetuses are innocent human beings, then (3) it is wrong to kill fetuses. For if "human" is used in the same sense in both (1) and (2) then, whichever of the two uses is meant, one of these premises is question-begging. And if it is used in two different senses then of course the conclusion doesn't follow. [It would be an equivocation.]
Thus, (1) is a self-evident moral truth (fn. 7), and avoids begging the question about abortion, only if "human being" is used to mean something like "a full-fledged member of the moral community." (It may or may not also be meant to refer exclusively to members of the species Homo sapiens.) We may call this the moral sense of "human." It is not to be confused with what we will call the genetic sense; i.e., the sense in which a member of the species is a human being, and no member of any other species could be. If (1) is acceptable only if the moral sense is intended, (2) is non-question-begging only if what is intended is the genetic sense.
In "Deciding Who Is Human," Noonan argues for the classification of fetuses with human beings by pointing to the presence of the full genetic code, and the potential capacity for rational thought (p. 135). It is clear that what he needs to show, for his version of the traditional argument to be valid, is that fetuses are human in the moral sense, the sense in which it is analytically true that all human beings have full moral rights. But, in the absence of any argument showing that whatever is genetically human is also morally human, and he gives none, nothing more than genetic humanity can be demonstrated by the presence of the human genetic code. And, as we will see, the potential capacity for rational thought can at most show that an entity has the potential for becoming human in the moral sense.
2. Defining the Moral Community
Can it be established that genetic humanity is sufficient for moral humanity'? I think that there are very good reasons for not defining the moral community in way. I would like to suggest an alternative way of defining the moral community, which I will argue for only to the extent of explaining why it is, or should be, self-evident. The suggestion is simply that the moral community consists of all and only people, rather than all and only human beings (fn. 8); and probably the best way of demonstrating its self-evidence is by considering the concept of personhood, to see what sorts of entity are and are not persons, and what the decision that a being is or is not a person implies about its moral rights.
What characteristics entitle an entity to be considered a person? This is obviously not the place to attempt a complete analysis of the concept of personhood, but we do not need such a fully adequate analysis just to determine whether and why a fetus is or isn't a person. All we need is a rough and approximate list of the most basic criteria of personhood, and some idea of which, or how many, of these an entity must satisfy in order to properly be considered a person.
In searching for such criteria, it is useful to look beyond the set of people with whom we are acquainted, and ask how we would decide whether a totally alien being was a person or not. (For we have no right to assume that genetic humanity is necessary for personhood.) Imagine a space traveler who lands on an unknown planet and encounters a race of beings utterly unlike any he has ever seen or heard of. If he wants to be sure of behaving morally toward these beings, he has to somehow decide whether they are people, and hence have full moral rights, or whether they are the sort of thing which he need not feel guilty about treating as, for example, a source of food.
How should he go about making this decision? If he has some anthropological background, he might look for such things as religion, art, and the manufacturing of tools, weapons, or shelters, since these factors have been used to distinguish our human from our prehuman ancestors, in what seems to be closer to the moral than the genetic sense of "human." And no doubt he would be right to consider the presence of such factors as good evidence that the alien beings were people, and morally human. It would, however, be overly anthropocentric of him to take the absence of these things as adequate evidence that they were not, since we can imagine people who have progressed beyond, or evolved without ever developing these cultural characteristics.
I suggest that the traits which are most central to the concept of personhood, or humanity' in the moral sense, are, very roughly; the following:
1. consciousness (of objects and events external and/or internal to the being), and in particular the capacity to feel pain;
2. reasoning (the developed capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);
3. self-motivated activity (activity which is relatively independent of either genetic or direct external control);
4. the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an indefinite variety of types, that is, not just with an indefinite number of possible contents, but on indefinitely many possible topics;
5. the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual or racial, or both.
Admittedly, there are apt to he a great many problems involved in formulating precise definitions of these criteria, let alone in developing universally valid behavioral criteria for deciding when they apply. But I will assume that both we and our explorer know approximately what (1)-(5) mean, and that he is also able to determine whether or not they apply. How, then, should he use his findings to decide whether or not the alien beings are people? We needn't suppose that an entity must have oil of these attributes to he properly considered a person; (1) and (2) alone may well he sufficient for personhood, and quite probably (1)-(3), if "activity" is construed so as to include the activity of reasoning.
All we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person, is that any being which satisfies none of (1)-(5) is certainly not a person. I consider this claim to be so obvious that I think anyone who denied it, and claimed that a being which satisfied none of (1)-(5) was a person all the same, would thereby demonstrate that he had no notion at all of what a person is - perhaps because he had confused the concept of a person with that of genetic humanity. If the opponents of abortion were to deny the appropriateness of these five criteria, I do not know what further arguments would convince them. We would probably have to admit that our conceptual schemes were indeed irreconcilably different, and that our dispute could not be settled objectively.
I do not expect this to happen, however, since I think that the concept of a person is one which is very nearly universal (to people), and that it is common to both proabortionists and antiabortionists, even though neither group has fully realized the relevance of this concept to the resolution of their dispute. Furthermore, I think that on reflection even the antiabortionists ought to agree not only that (1) - (5) are central to the concept of personhood, but also that it is a part of this concept that all and only people have full moral rights. The concept of a person is in part a moral concept; once we have admitted that x is a person we have recognized, even if we have not agreed to respect, x's right to he treated as a member of the moral community. It is true that the claim that x is a human being is more commonly voiced as part of an appeal to treat x decently than is the claim that x is a person, but this is either because "human being" is here used in the sense which implies personhood, or because the genetic and moral sense of "human" have been confused.
Now if (1)-(5) are indeed the primary criteria of personhood, then it is clear that genetic humanity is neither necessary nor sufficient for establishing that an entity is a person. Some human beings arc not people, and there may well be people who are not human beings. A man or woman whose consciousness has been permanently obliterated but who remains alive is a human being which is no longer a person; defective human beings, with no appreciable mental capacity, are not and presumably never will be people; and a fetus is a human being which is not yet a person, and which therefore cannot coherently be said to have full moral rights. Citizens of the next century should be prepared to recognize highly advanced, self-aware robots or computers, should such he developed, and intelligent inhabitants of other worlds, should such he found, as people in the fullest sense, and to respect their moral rights. But to ascribe full moral rights to an entity which is not a person is as absurd as to ascribe moral obligations and responsibilities to such an entity.
Tossica wrote:Araby wrote:I like her, she's someone I have a lot of respect for. I got her book for my dad for Christmas, he and I differ in our political views, him being farther right than myself, so I thought it would be cute to get that book for him from me, hehe.
I'm reading it when he's done, and I think I'll gather a ton of much-needed information from her, she's got her shit together.
She is cancer.
Azlana wrote:Ann Coulter is hideously ugly and a fucking bitch. Also, I am pro-choice, but not after the first trimester, for the record. Late term should be, and is (pretty much everywhere right???) illegal, and should be. If you couldn't make up your mind in three months, tough shit.
Azlana wrote: Late term should be, and is (pretty much everywhere right???) illegal, and should be. If you couldn't make up your mind in three months, tough shit.
Harrison wrote:Ann is a fucking nutcase, I'd fuck the crazy out of her though...
Vivalicious wrote:Lots of females don't want you to put your penis in their mouths. Some prefer it in their ass.
Vivalicious wrote:Lots of females don't want you to put your penis in their mouths. Some prefer it in their ass.
KaiineTN wrote:Hey.. You're not a shoplifter, you're just a fat kid. Sorry about that fatty fat fatty. Hey Tom, he's just a fat kid! Aren't you, fatty? You're just a big ol' fat kid. Here's some chocolate, fatso.
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