Defending The Human Personhood

[rkwright]

I'm in a debate with a fellow student over 'personhood' in relation to aborition. He claims fetuses aren't persons because they don't meet 6 functioning criteria (Mary Anne Warren). We've debated back and forth, this was the latest email I recieved from him. Any advice?

First, the six criteria are picked because they are characteristics which create universal interests that anyone would want because of the type of beings they are. I don’t want to suffer. Neither do you. That is a universal link between us. I reason, communicate, have moral agency and autonomy. So do you and you would say these are fundamental to what makes you who you are. Moral principles must be capable of being universalizable so that we cant make exceptions for ourselves. We should therefore look for common interests which any rational person could agree matter to them. The racist says, "I think black people should be subordinated to whites." The black person says, "I don’t agree to that and in no world could I possibly consent." This is true and shows why race is a poor indication of moral value and morally important commonly held interests. It cant be universally willed to stand as a moral principle for ALL people. A Nazi tells a Jew he is going to kill him. The Jew asks "why?" "Well it’s because you are a Jew," says the soldier. The Jew says his life matters to him because he can suffer, reason, acts as a moral agent just like the Nazi. The Nazi says he does not care and shoots him anyway. What the Nazi has done however is make an arbitrary exception for the Jew by failing to see the objective and essential similarities between himself and the Jew, something that all moral beings trying to create universalizable principles could agree on. Or take the right to vote for women. Men and women, although physically different possess obvious similar qualities. They are equally capable of reasoning and calculating their interests for democratic thought. There is no good reason to exclude them. We have to treat like cases alike.



Second, Peter Kreeft says, "One cannot function as a person without being a person, but one can surely be a person without functioning as a person." The last clause suffers from the fallacy of equivocation in using the word "functioning." Deep sleep is not like an unrecoverable coma. Someone in deep sleep still possesses all his capacities. His brain is not damaged, you can wake him up, he's just resting. He still has the actual capacity for a functioning brain. In contrast, the person in the coma has lost the capacity to have a functioning brain, and has lost everything it means to be a person. He's just a completely unconscious empty shell and will never recover. Kreeft is wrong because he does not distinguish between an active capacity for a functioning brain and the lack of capacity to possess a functioning brain. His loose usage of "functioning" allows his to slide his meaning to create a straw man. I dont find it very persuasive. (Im not saying we kill people in comas. In fact, it might be good to err on the side of caution to see if they wake up, but if the brain has liquefied like in the Terri schrivo case, there is little chance the brain will ever be back together. Other people, like family and loved ones may require us to honor the comatose person because of them and their desires but it is not the comatose person themself which commands our respect. The entity without interests does not have moral claims and is like a rock. )



Then Kreeft says: "It is because of what we are, because of our nature or essence or being, that we can and do function in these ways. We have human souls, and plants do not; that’s why we can know ourselves and plants can’t. "



That humans have a special essence or soul that grants us status outside of our capacities is question begging. Why believe a soul exists, or that genetically human substances have a special "essence." Im not religious and I dont believe in a "soul." How do you argue with me about that? And how does Kreeft think trees dont have souls? He doesnt explain himself. Furthermore, why is this "human essence" better than the essence of a cow or chicken? Because it has the potentiality to become rational, moral, autonomous? I already argued why the potentiality argument is problematic earlier. What we really need to do is to find objective similarities for universal moral principles that all rational beings could agree on, not just religious ones.



Finally, you dont have to be a utilitarian to accept these arguments. Kant thought only beings that actually had rationality could count as morally important beings. Many deontological scholars today have rejected this framework and say suffering in animals should matter as well because they have relevantly similar interests to humans. I am a deontologist.

[abercius24]

Interesting. What article from Peter Kreeft is he refering to?

Edited March 19, 2008 by abercius24

[thessalonian]

He seems to think we should all agree to his logic and sing kumbayah together simply because he has rationalized something. This is very sad. What he is proposing is that there be a higher moral authority than ourselves yet he is not. He wants everyone to agree, but to agree with him. He wants to exclude the voice of the baby in the womb as well. His inanate desire for a higher authority stops short of where it should, the infinite God who says "thou shalt not kill" and says "I knew you before you were in your mothers womb". Why should we not err on this conservative side of this issue if we are to err on concervatisive for the invalid (by the way who told him Terri Shivo's brain liquified). We know that the child in the womb will come "out of it's comma". That it's brain WILL function, the critera that he uses for keeping the man in a comma alive. And what constitues a functioning brain? When their are brain waves the brain is functioning at some level and very early on in the embryo in the womb there are brain waves. Within days I believe it is. He seems to think that the only critera for determining if a brain is functioning is if it will be completely conscious of who it is within a few hours or can be woken up. He arbitrarily decides that we shouldn't kill someone in a comma because the might wake up. Yet is he willing to go along with it if the government agrees that it is okay the instant someone is determined to be in a comma? The logic here is that we need to agree on something and you should agree with me and that will settle it. Very sad. The arguementation he uses is very sinister and very sad. My quick thoughts. Hope they help. By the way in a debate Kreft would crush his logic like a cracker.