But I would at least encourage you to look into the foundations and history of your beliefs (the whole "killing a fetus is murder" is, historically speaking, very recent -- it has always been serious, but it has rarely been equated to murder until recently). And, of course, I will defend mine if called into question -- especially on a philosophy forum of all places. — Moliere
But I wanted to extend an olive branch. I do actually enjoy these conversations. Like I said, it's one of my favorite topics in philosophy for the very reason that people really do care about it. — Moliere
I would locate personhood in a complete and functioning brain as part of a functioning body. — Bitter Crank
This looks like a perverse reduction of childbirth to a mechanistic process, ignoring its human significance. Clearly, birth and separation are part of the same event (or process if you prefer). It's an event in which a new person is initiated into the human world, into society. This is what matters to morality, not any mechanical stipulations or biological facts. — jamalrob
And I think it's quite silly to say that in regarding birth as the basic cut-off point we are being arbitrary. You may not agree that birth is where it's at, but it's hardly arbitrary. Birth is the centrally important, ultimate event of a pregnancy, the moment when a person comes to be, or begins to be, and the moment the mother's months of bodily change, discomfort, and anticipation have all been leading up to. For many it is the most significant, most life-changing moment of their lives. — jamalrob
There is a new person in the world: this is what birth means, what makes it significant in all human cultures. — jamalrob
Biological facts and medical procedures are subsumed by or subservient to the social and cultural, particularly when we're talking morality. — jamalrob
Which scientific literature tells us when something ought to be treated as a bearer of rights? — Moliere
Persons are agentive beings who develop through profound embeddedness in socio-cultural contexts and within inalienable relations to and interactions with others.
—Anna Stetsenko, in The Psychology of Personhood
But that doesn't make it arbitrary. If you're right, it makes it habitual or conventional at best, irrational at worst. But you're wrong anyway. I am not assigning personhood to a baby on the basis of tradition; I am accurately describing what it means to be a person and how persons come to be, and the significance of childbirth. Moral, social and cultural significance is the primary issue in matters of morality. Note that moral, social and cultural significance is about much more than "symbolism and tradition". It is also about, for example, what it is to feel pain: feeling pain is a subjective experience belonging to an individual, and not mere nociception.But it is arbitrary, because the grounds for choosing the moment of birth as the moment when the baby deserves to be granted rights aren't based on reason, but rather on symbolism and tradition. — Sapientia
I don't agree. The extent to which a fetus is in the human world--by which I mean the world that a person (the pregnant woman) is socially embedded in but which is external to their body--is the extent to which it has taken on a significance to the mother (and perhaps the father) as a proto-person.It existed before birth, and where else but the human world? It is human after all, and it necessarily exists in the world. It is not a fully independent member of society either before birth or after birth, but it deserves certain rights nonetheless.
Which seems to be a theme here among you three --
You reject my answer to the question, "When does a fetus have rights?". I ask for one from you, but get none. — Moliere
(Y)To make my implicit argument for the morally unproblematic nature of every kind of abortion explicit, embryos and fetuses are not persons, and they are a part of another person's body. As nonpersons, they can have no rights, and the human person that carries them has a right to dispose of her body as she sees fit, particularly since her actions do not impact other persons. — To Mega Therion
One is not a person by having a functioning brain. They are (under that argument) a person because this individual, who has a functioning brain, ought to be protected. Personhood is the expression someone ought to belong the world, that their interests and presence matters. — TheWillowOfDarkness
It is this ethical value which someone time falls by the wayside when abortion is discussed. In effect, people keep what's really driving their position hidden. The squabble over semantics of "personhood" rather than actually stating their (ethical) position on personhood. We get a second order claims about what must make a person, rather than proper statements about who has personhood.
I don't think you see quite what I mean by the social or cultural. Either that or you grossly underestimate it. I'm not talking about any old tradition or custom. I'm talking about what it means to be human and moral. But I admit that I'm only half-heartedly explaining things; to fill in the gaps would take several monster posts. This might give you some idea:
Persons are agentive beings who develop through profound embeddedness in socio-cultural contexts and within inalienable relations to and interactions with others.
—Anna Stetsenko, in The Psychology of Personhood
But it goes back to my reply above to BC. Biological reductionism often seems to be the default position, which I think is why the abortion issue is seeing the reactionary, regressive pressures that you and Baden represent. (Yes, more name-calling, I know) — jamalrob
But that doesn't make it arbitrary. If you're right, it makes it habitual or conventional at best, irrational at worst. — jamalrob
But you're wrong anyway. I am not assigning personhood to a baby on the basis of tradition; I am accurately describing what it means to be a person and how persons come to be, and the significance of childbirth. Moral, social and cultural significance is the primary issue in matters of morality. Note that moral, social and cultural significance is about much more than "symbolism and tradition". It is also about, for example, what it is to feel pain: feeling pain is a subjective experience belonging to an individual, and not mere nociception. — jamalrob
I don't agree. The extent to which a fetus is in the human world--by which I mean the world that a person (the pregnant woman) is socially embedded in but which is external to their body--is the extent to which it has taken on a significance to the mother (and perhaps the father) as a proto-person. — jamalrob
Persons are agentive beings who develop through profound embeddedness in socio-cultural contexts and within inalienable relations to and interactions with others.
—Anna Stetsenko, in The Psychology of Personhood
But it goes back to my reply above to BC. Biological reductionism often seems to be the default position, which I think is why the abortion issue is seeing the reactionary, regressive pressures that you and Baden represent. (Yes, more name-calling, I know) — jamalrob
As for pain, just as I think it'd be wrong to kill a newborn baby on a whim if no pain were involved, I think that it'd be wrong to kill an unborn baby on a whim if no pain were involved. I say "on a whim" because both you and Moliere have made comments about no legal restrictions, so whims would be legitimate. You can't simply dismiss these counterexamples as conservative rhetoric. — Sapientia
I mean if our position is reactionary, you're going to have to come up with some new vocabulary for those who would force a woman who had been raped and is suicidal to carry a pregnancy through its full term, which is another form of cruelty which I would oppose as much as you would. — Baden
I think I can dismiss them as conservative rhetoric, because the evidence I've already linked to shows that women do not do it on a whim. — jamalrob
But in the end it is up to them, whether it is on a whim or not — jamalrob
Also important to me is that women get the medical attention they need as early as possible, and restrictions on late abortions only hinder that. — jamalrob
If this woman only managed to get to the abortion clinic in the third trimester, would you still oppose a law that forced her to go through with the birth? For the sake of argument let's say she's not suicidal or at risk otherwise. — jamalrob
At the other end of a life, the loss of a functioning brain (brain death or profound irreversible coma) is the end of personhood.
— Bitter Crank
Just to make clear, I wouldn't say this. Someone who has lived a life has a separate body, a history, and many relationships, rights, and so forth, even after death. Or if someone is in a coma, for instance, or has brain damage. Since it isn't the state of the brain or cellular structure which defines personhood, under my theory, neither does the deterioration of the brain deny a person their rights, property, and so forth. — Moliere
If embodiment (having a cellular structure, brain, senses, blood, guts -- all the gory details) doesn't define one's personhood, I am not clear about where you think personhood resides — Bitter Crank
But I would not equate personhood with the acquisition of those capabilities either since the latter is a matter of degree while the former is a categorical distinction. — Pierre-Normand
Is there an argument in favour of viewing personhood as a categorical distinction as opposed to a matter of degree, or are you presupposing that position? — Soylent
Honestly Moliere, I don't know why you keep mentioning Catholics with me except as some kind of odd attempt to tar me with religious beliefs I don't have. I only came into this debate to argue about super-late-term abortions. Hanover and Sapientia aren't Catholic either to my knowledge nor are the vast majority of people who oppose your views — Baden
I want to make this clear again. I don't think "killing a fetus is murder" necessarily. My objection specifically was to the killing of an about-to-be-born fetus on the grounds that it is human and should be granted some protection and that the harm done to the mother to carry the birth through is unlikely to outweigh the harm done to it except in very exceptional circumstances. Earlier abortions should be considered based on the balance of harm and the less developed the fetus the less harm that can be said to be being done to it. — Baden
I'm not sure how much I enjoy it. I find it disturbing sometimes. But I accept your olive branch and will try to keep my vociferous disagreement with your view on this issue polite for the sake of the debate.
I could sum up my view like this: A world where people are free to treat babies as they do animals and where abortions could be carried out at any time for any reason would be a much less humane and a much less compassionate world than this one is, and this one isn't exactly winning many awards for humanity and compassion as it is. — Baden
You're taking things out of context. You said that your position depends on your being "correct in considering the fetus an organ". That is what I claimed is in conflict with scientific literature. As is the denial that the foetus has organs or "anything at all". — Sapientia
That isn't true. The other two can correct me if I'm wrong, but all three of us (four of us, if you include Hanover in addition to Baden, Bitter Crank and myself) have - and have expressed - the belief that a foetus has (or effectively has) rights at some point between it's initial formation and birth, and I have appealed to the Abortion Act 1967 as a guide. — Sapientia
It seems a very unlikely scenario that a woman would need more than 27 weeks to find an abortion clinic after being raped, but I'll answer anyway. First of all, whether I think the abortion would be justified in a case like this would depend on a variety of variables. If the woman concerned was just a week or two before giving birth, most of her suffering would probably have already occurred and be unpreventable, so I would think on balance the greater harm would be to abort the fetus. If she was a month or two before birth and was suffering greatly (even if not suicidal) it might not be. I'm not sure how you would draft a law that would cover the complexities here and if my only choice was to oppose or to not oppose one that would force a mother to go through with a pregnancy after the third trimester in all cases barring a threat to the life of the mother (i.e. including a rape that didn't make the mother suicidal), I would find it very difficult to make a call. I'd just have to think more about it. One very important reason I oppose some abortions, above and beyond the harm to the fetus, is that usually the mother has some responsibility in causing the pregnancy. In the case of rape, there is not only no responsibility, there is a greatly increased risk of psychological suffering being caused by the pregnancy. That obviously carries a lot of weight. — Baden
This requires some unpacking. You have provided some additional details about this view, but I can't find it. (Spending too much time on philosophy often results in badly scorched gruel.) — Bitter Crank
If embodiment (having a cellular structure, brain, senses, blood, guts -- all the gory details) doesn't define one's personhood, I am not clear about where you think personhood resides, if it resides anywhere. Granted, legal systems define personhood in various ways; dead people leave estates with their name attached to it (but executors carry out the will of the deceased); memory and the written and printed word, recordings, photographs, etc. give an after-death existence to people, and as long as the texts are in circulation (sometimes for millennia) a 'personhood' can continue to exist. Christians officially think that Jesus still exists, in heaven, quite a-corporeally. Or maybe not. Haven't been there to check it out. Billions of people think they will survive death a-corporeally in heaven.
But... not everybody looks at it that way.
So, where is the person and how is the person constituted?
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