Peter, if you're going through a bad patch I'll gladly pray for you.

To Bob,

The debate over abortion among professional philosophers tends to focus on what the features are that makes a human being entitled to claim a right to life. Few philosophers now question the fact that the foetus belongs to our species in a biological sense. They just claim that being human is not the same thing as being a person.

Many of those philosophers on the pro-choice side claim that there is no basis to treat human beings in the biological sense any better a priori than other animal species. They call the so-called discrimination on the basis of species "speciesism" and they draw a parallel between that and racism.

If we grand their point about "speciesism" and if we admit, as you seem to do, that sentience is what endows beings with rights, then you have to admit the unpalatable conclusion that mature chimps have a higher moral status than newborns. In fact, infanticide could be justified on utilitarian grounds if the parents' inconvenience weighs more than the dim feelings of the newborn.

To Bob,

Well, now I don't think I would save the ten frozen embryos. But I would save the six pregnant women.

LS,



I'm saying that certain Christian ideologies (namely those revolving around a sweeping ascription of sacredness to life, with little or no regard for the quality of the lives they serve to save or prolong) are abhorrently misguided! Worse yet: for many years now, an army of Christian missionaries has been deployed on many fronts around the globe -- the chief mission being to spread those ridiculous ideas, thereby promoting the unhealthy mindsets and phobias associated with the Christian faith (not the least of which being the fear of death). In sum, here's a clue for you, Lindsay: for a people born and raised amid the flames of poverty, famine, drought, and disease, in the virtual bastions of Hell on Earth they call their homelands, the LAST THING they need instilled in their cultures is the predominantly western FEAR of what supposedly awaits their unsaved dead.



Knock yourself out; but don't think for a second that your snide insinuation has any basis in reality. For me, the absence of fear where the 'D Word' is concerned ...stands on my firm conviction that there's simply nothing there for anyone to fear, least of all for those whose lives are so heavily weighted in favor of suffering.

Meunier:


How could anyone question this??


You’re not getting my point. It’s really simple: there is a spectrum of personhood (and if you don’t like the use of person, as Lindsay apparently doesn’t, I’ll probably be happy to use whatever word you suggest).

If you want to throw chimpanzees on the personhood scale, go ahead, but I recommend we just stick with Homo sapiens for now and complicate things once we’ve reached agreement.

Keep in mind that you could acknowledge the spectrum of person-ness and still put the OK/not-OK dividing line for abortion before conception. For now, I’m simply saying that there’s a spectrum. Perhaps we could first work to reach agreement on this point.

I'm pretty sure that I'd save the 10 non-pregnant women. Interesting how opinions shift as the problem is reformulated ...

To Bob,

What do you mean exactly by spectrum of personhood? Do you mean that the more a being resembles a normal adult human being, the more rights it has? Where do rights come from? Can't personhood be viewed as a yes-or-no thing?

Bob- on your "spectrum of personhood"...do people fall down into lower levels of it as their bodies age & breakdown. In other words, are elderly people or handicap people for that matter to be considered less human?

Mindzeye's is a good question for a secular moral philosopher! It could have a bearing on the euthanasia issue.

You're assuming what you have yet to demonstrate, that a spectrum exists in the area of personhood.

This is not a semantic game. It is a matter of ontology and epistemology; what is it and can we know?

If you're asserting that personhood is determined by how many cells you're made of your entire fire in the fertility clinic example fails because the 7 year old is made of more cells than any one of the babies, so by your person-value = cell count example the 7 year old still wins and your argument still fails.



Let me clarify your burden here, because you seem to think we're playing at semantics.

You have to show that there is a value difference based on what the thing is in its essence. So here's your problem to solve:

A conceptus is essentially human and living.

Therefore there is not an essential difference.

Therefore you must argue for an emergent difference that occurs at some point between the creation of the unique human DNA and birth.

This emergent difference must be identifiable, measurable and must grant something called "personhood" that is absent in the conceptus.

If you cannot identify what the quality of "personhood" is or when it occurs (if binary) or how much of that quality is required to grant dignity to the biological human unit (if a spectrum) giving us a guide as to when we should be allowed to kill it in absence of any moral cause, then your argument is an appeal to ignorance and therefore falls under the quadrilemma outlined before.

I argue that personhood is binary and is coextensive with humanness. When a unique human DNA is created, so is a person with all the commensurate dignity.

I assume the dignity of the human person as the Imago Dei, but you may also try to say that a conceptus is a person, but dignity is bestowed at some point post personhood. If you take this tack you must give sufficient cause to grant that dignity separate personhood. In other words, the problem for you is the same.

Your argumentum ad ignorantiam is a fallacy and fails your argument in the face of the qaudrilemma so you must remove the "ignorantiam" part and give us an argument from actual evidence for an objective quality of personhood.



Uh... one has a morally culpable actor who perpetrates an act with moral content.

The lack of ability to save any number of persons in an "act of God" scenario in no way makes the would-be savior morally culpable for the deaths of whoever he was unable to save.

You have outlined the classic "trolley" ethical dilemma, when the content of the actual problem is the "fat man" dilemma.



First of all, who a person saves in those instances is not bases on a spectrum of personhood.

Second, even if that were not so, the dilemma doesn't demonstrate a spectrum at all, but a binary.

Third, this is NOTHING if not an "ivory tower" rumination.

Fourth, you're the one defining "personhood" as an emergent quality separate from "humanness". It's an artificial distinction without any evidence.



Because we don't share a reasoning here. You're asserting something and saying "See it's obvious," but you aren't even able to identify the quality you expect me to see.



Oh, but that doesn't have anything to do with any quality of "personhood" unless you're saying the ability to feel pain is the emergent quality you are arguing bestows dignity upon the living human. You can anesthetize the 5 year old and he won't feel a thing, yet it is still human, so the ability to feel pain cannot be the relevant matter.

But I suspect you'd make the same choice if the 5 year old were anesthetized and it has nothing to do with any elusive "personhood" argument, but rather an "empathy" argument. The 5 year old looks like you.



Negative. You're shifting ground again! Now the measure is a number of cells, but your whole scenario of saving 10 babies fails because the 7 year old still has more cells than any of the babies.

Does a fat man have more human dignity than an anorexic?

You have not yet identified any measurable emergent quality that is sufficient to your case.

You are arguing for an emergent quality we now are calling "childness", yet you have done nothing, zero, zilch, nada to demonstrate that such an emergent quality has any meaning.

It must be something separate being alive.

It must be something separate being human.

It must be something.

It must endow the biological unit with dignity at some finite point.



So you're back to your unproven emergent quality, only now you are calling it "development". But development is only a description of how a small thing becomes a large thing, or a simple thing becomes a complex thing, but the "thingness" remains the same in essence.

You are not arguing development simpliciter, you are arguing that development causes a transformation at some finite point from not being a thing essentially, to being a thing essentially.

But a blastocyst is just what a human person looks like when it is very small.



Really?

How many abortions kill human being versus other causes?

In my community "Abortion Kills More Black Americans Than the Seven Leading Causes of Death Combined, Says CDC Data"




People agree or disagree for lots of different reasons, often having nothing to do with anything like the actual cogency of the arguments, present company included.



Then don't argue them as if championing one means not championing the other. It's a false dichotomy.



I've never met anyone like that. I wonder if they actually exist?



God and doctors are in very different moral categories. You don't have a competent jurisdiction to judge God on this issue, but you do have a competent jurisdiction to judge a doctor, or a murderer, or drunk driver...

Could God have a morally sufficient reason to give life in one instance and take it away in another? Yes.

Could a doctor have morally sufficient reason to do either? No. Doctors don't give life at all, only God does, and doctors only have a mandate to save life where they are able for the very reason that they are not God.



How small a clump of cells (containing the DNA of a unique human being), Bob?

20 Weeks?

10?

Give me an objective measurable reason.



NO ONE understands this spectrum. You cannot even tell what the substance of it actually is.

The reason for describing that "procedure" (read barbaric murder) is that it is legal and should be banned forever. It does not make the argument that the pre-born are people, but assumes it.

Your part in this hasn't changed at all. You have to demonstrate an emergent quality that bestows dignity on a "clump of cells" at some point.

Nevertheless, if I describe sucking this 20 week old little girl out through a vacuum hose piece by piece, do you really think that will be less compelling?





Maybe describing this 8 week old's horrific death would be better for you?



Maybe at 6 weeks it's not a person for some inexplicable reason?



Perhaps the emergent miracle of personhood hasn't happened at 5 weeks yet, so I can freely talk about sucking its little heart, liver, brain and spinal chord through a vacuum tube?



That's not a "clump of cells" by anyone's reckoning, Bob. By anyone's knowledgeable and objective appraisal from the time of conception forward a conceptus is a highly organized and purposeful structure that is the bearer of a unique, human DNA. It's not the mother. It's not the father. It's unique and it is human.

There is no mysterious happening anywhere in the process where it becomes something new, ontologically. Any attempts to assign such a thing are completely arbitrary.

Even your unsubstantiated "spectrum/continuum" argument can't be saying that "personhood" is completely absent in the conceptus. It must merely be smaller, but we would answer, "Duh!". Unless, that is, you are NOT arguing a true spectrum, but a binary emergence, in which case you are saying personhood is absolutely absent until a certain identifiable point where it suddenly appears.

Because "a little bit of personhood" is still personhood!




But Bob, you didn't demonstrate a spectrum of anything.

You have not yet learned the difference between an argument and an assertion and it's horribly frustrating to anyone who cares about the issues you weigh in on.



Again, the size of the problem, if measured in actual deaths, is easily on the side of abortion.

Secondly, "focusing" on ANY issue, then should be discouraged by your logic. Let's not focus on breast cancer or prostate cancer domestically, because there are dying people in Darfur?

What a ridiculous notion.



Bob, you have demonstrated over and over that you do not even know when an argument is made. You have an uncanny ability to assert things and think you've actually made an argument.

Furthermore, you don't know when an argument has been defeated.

Here's my tip to you: read a basic book on logical argument and apply it to your posts before you post them. This will help avoid your Seidenstickerisms like the whole unicorn thread and your entire thesis here.

LB