Describe is what it is like. Define is what it is.
The harm is still done but it’s a difference in culpability - between murder and manslaughter, or in the case of yourself and a chainsaw, between accidental suicide and premeditated suicide. The harm is the same, but yet we as a society say act deserves worse punishment than the other.
This is also what would keep miscarriage cases out of the courtroom by default. Even if they do go into the courtroom I would ask all such cases to be sealed upon the family’s request.
When we talk about the severity of the punishment, I would never sentence a woman to death or a life sentence for “murdering” her unborn child. I may not even fine her if she is destitute - but I would require a medical checkup because illegal abortions can be horrendously unsafe. As for a medical provider, the worst I would support is a large fine per instance and loss of license. For an unlicensed repeat abortion provider (who is not the mother) I would press for jail time, especially if the methods are unsafe and the children aborted are not their own.
~Max
To the extent that there is a difference, the traits of personhood fall squarely into the latter category.
I’m glad that you’re not interested in a semantic argument, though.
I’m no biologist but here is my guess.
While an egg cell is human it is not a human. In order to develop into a human it must fuse with a sperm cell.
The same applies for a sperm cell. In order to develop into a human, a sperm cell must fuse with an egg cell.
So the bright line, whereupon a human being emerges, would be the point where all of its genetics are self-contained. I use genetics because that is generally seen as the ultimate standard for species identity. It is true that there may be mutations during development, and some of these may be effected by external sources (eg: radiation or viruses in the more unfortunate cases), but for the most part it’s all there from the point of mitosis.
This says nothing about personhood, which is not a matter of science.
~Max
Great you get the picture.
So, exactly, what are the minimum necessary requirements of personhood?
Just list them out, please.
Let’s be clear, though, that “minimum necessary requirements” appears to be an oblique way of returning to the “bright line” question. Finding the minimum necessary requirements for personhood is no clearer than finding the minimum necessary requirements for adulthood; yet I don’t let my six-year-old drink tequila.
Also, I really do encourage you to read that whole page, instead of just snippets. All the issues you’re coming up with? They’ve already been though about by folks, and a lot of your objections have pretty good answers.
I knew Poe’s law would catch up eventually. 
I submit that is exactly what you appear to be doing. Let’s fix the big problems in the world first and the little ones might just follow in step. Shall we start with the middle east?
Yeah, but I didn’t get stranded on an island with no beer. 
It’s certainly possible to argue that there must be a bright line somewhere between ‘person’ and ‘not a person’. Those who insist that there must be such a line can spend lots of time arguing about where it is, and what definitions could be used to find it.
But none of that is going to create a bright line where there isn’t one. Many humans like bright either/or dividing lines; and people writing laws are often forced into using them. For an instance: However absurd it is to say that a person 20 years and 364 days old is too young to handle drinking alcohol, but that same person becomes instantly old enough to do so at midnight on day 20 years +365 or if it’s a fourth year +366, if there’s going to be a minimum legal drinking age it has to be written in that fashion. Drawing the line for legal purposes doesn’t make the line real for anything other than legal purposes, of course.
In the actual factual universe, such lines very often just don’t exist.
Part of what some of us are saying in this thread (most of us are saying several things) is that the line between personhood and not, during the development from germ cell to living human, is not a bright line and can’t be made one; it’s essentially, by its nature, blurry. Any law written on the subject (if there is to be such a law) will of course have to draw a line; but the line so drawn must be arbitrary.
It’s possible for two people to agree that a line is imaginary but also to agree that for legal purposes there needs to be one. We have to decide that there’s some point at which a person legally becomes a person, after all. But part of the difficulty in conversations of this sort is that some of those who insist there’s a bright line and that they know exactly where it is are calling others immoral for either denying that such a line exists, or denying that this imaginary line must be set at the specific time at which those making the accusations of immorality want to set it. I don’t think that particular claim of immorality is either a logical or a useful type of argument.
Ok. I’ve read that and several other things like it. It does not really advance or change anything since the debate I had with Gaudere 15 years ago, which as Inpointed out in my OP I found dissatisfying.
But let’s examine this both specifically and generally, again, and see if I can’t illustrate the problem for you.
As your quote illustrates, it is possible some animals might be considered persons and some persons might not if we use this definition. What he is really saying is that personhood seems to come out of some variety or combination of these things. We associate these things with personhood, the way we might associate doors, and wheels and engines, and steering wheels with cars. We know that they tend to have these things and these are the things that make cars. But these things are not the definition of cars. Nor are these things the definition of personhood.
It’s a pretty important question. We are literally determine what living things are not persons to see whether or not we are morally justified in killing them.
Getting this question wrong has resulted in the justification of things like slavery and the holocaust.
Some living human persons are born without the capacity to feel pain, or they lose it, we are not always conscious, we can’t always communicate or move, we do not always reason. This could be used to suggest that 6 month old baby’s are not persons. It could be used to suggest that people without alzheimer’s past a certain point are no longer persons.
This is clearly not a good definition. You put my thinking down because you claim that it make to look ridiculous in extreme conditions like cloning or twins.
Yours is not ridiculous at all. It is horrifyingly scary in terms of how it could be used right now! This doesn’t just let us abort babies, this basically dehumanizes swaths of the human population and grants personhood to animals.
So no. Not very good or usable.
Do you see the problem?
You don’t get a usable definition by playing the development game, because as I implied in my OP and Max stated outright, this is not a scientific question. It is a moral one. Beyond that, it is a fiction.
That’s how I end up back at conception. That’s when you have the beginning of a unique human life where all these things come that emerge into personhood. I feel pretty safe that we are not killing a person before that point. After that everything slowly come together and somewhere down the line you end up with a person. I choose conception because there is no bright line after that point.
This does not put the kibosh on abortion, though. As I pointed out, I arrive at the pro choice position by a different path. Which is that killing persons is not something that society really objects to beyond lip service.
But, let’s say you are not comfortable with killing persons, not really willing to give up on the killing people is bad thing. Can you have your cake and eat it too in a way that allows for abortions without killing people?
Maybe. But you have to define what a person is, first. You need something rigorous and defined.
I would submit that personhood is not a scientific state, but a moral state. How about a moral definition?
I would submit that personhood is defined through the societal compact, and is a function of rights that must morally be respected.
I’m more worried about AI and gene drives.
We rationed what we brought with us, and squeaked through. The boat rental place was not picking up the phone. After several hours it occurred to us to call an adjacent business and ask them to go over and tell the idiot that our boat sank because he did not put the drain plug in.
(The physics of the boat drain plug situation are designed surprisingly stupidly, as if someone is trying to create a death trap. The plug is in the back near the engine. If you put your stuff in the boat, put the boat in the water and take off, your velocity will stop the water from coming in. When you turn the engine off and begin to drink beer and cut bait and fish the water slowly seeps in. By the time you notice it it is quite deep in the back of the boat. Going back there to try to fix it puts more weight in the back making it flood faster, and once you are over the gunwales you are now swimming. Less than five minutes from engine cutoff to submarine.)
But that wasn’t the OP topics you started, was it?
Nope. Point being?
Scylla, after a closer look at your original post I think I failed to see the real motive behind this thread. You had a good thing going after talking with Guadere, and I don’t see why you should give that up.
This is a non-issue and should be expected, as death is the opposite of life, the standard necessarily runs backwards. At the moment of personhood, the person is not expected to lose their capacity for thought. At the moment of death, a person is not expected to regain the same.
To stay consistent, I would have to argue the person in a coma still has the capacity for human thought - it is possible for them to come out of it, or they are in fact dead.
Whether we take into consideration future tech is beyond the scope of this thread, some people will say yes, some will say no, even on the pro-choice side, depending on how futuristic the technology is, what is causing the coma, who is paying for treatment, and who will be hurt how bad if the patient dies.
Unless you think (brain) death is a developmental disability, as opposed to a miscarriage, I don’t think this should be an issue.
~Max
Point being is that I think this is my stop.
Better luck to you in your next fishing expedition.
Right. It’s a fiction. Exactly. The bright line is imaginary and the choice as to where to set it is a societal question. (Ascribing immorality to everyone who disagrees with you as to where to set the line that you agree is fictional is another issue.)
Your choice to set it at conception has two major problems. One is that you’re claiming personhood for something with no brain and no nervous system (not to mention no organs, hormonal system, or anything else involved in being human.) The other is that doing so requires you to abrogate the personhood of pregnant women (though I think you may be trying to acknowledge this as a problem but simultaneously to claim that doing so is immoral, which is not a balancing act that I agree with.)
An alternate choice with at least as much claim to the imaginary bright line is the one that the society we live in has been using up to now, which is the point of birth. That has the weight of a whole lot of tradition behind it, meaning that we know that no, society does not devolve into a free for all of everyone murdering everyone else if we use it. It also, and more to the point if you don’t like arguments from tradition (and the only claim I’m making for that one is the lack of free for all murder), avoids both of the two problems I just pointed out. It does incur a different problem, which is that it makes a live birth at, say, 8 months’ gestation a person while a fetus at 8 months’ gestation is not. That’s because the universe doesn’t go in for bright lines; they’re a human problem.
IMO, and in a lot of other peoples’ opinions also, this single problem is a lesser problem than the two problems with your position. In support of that position I point out three arguments: one, that claiming personhood for a zygote or blastula is absurd, as they have no characteristics ordinarily considered to be part of personhood; two, that abrogating the personhood and rights of choice of pregnant women (and in some arguments in this thread of any woman or girl who might possibly become pregnant) is far more serious for both the individual women and for the society as a whole than abrogating any supposed “rights” of something that is capable neither of making choices nor of caring that it can’t; and three, that if both birth control (including methods that work to prevent implantation) and early abortion are readily available, late term abortions for reasons other than extremely drastic medical reasons are extremely rare; whereas if early abortion is forbidden then illegal abortion and attempts at abortion are quite common, and a significant number of these illegal attempts will result in the death of the pregnant woman along with, of course, the end of the pregnancy, and/or in serious damage to the long-term health of the woman (sometimes including damage such that she won’t be able to sustain any future pregnancy: more future lives prevented, not fewer.) In addition (though still part of argument 3), the physical and mental damage done to women (as well as often to dependents of such women) who are unwillingly pregnant but are unable to obtain or unwilling to risk illegal abortion is considerable.
I don’t think it holds. What would you think is my real motive?
I’m not aware of perpetrating a subterfuge in this regard.
I’m not sure I have anything to add to what I’ve already said on this subject.
I understand people who are inclined to view the fertilized ovum as a person. But I would ask them to understand the following: the fertilized ovum is also, simultaneously, with absolutely equal validity a part of the woman’s own body.
Not something that is merely in her body. It is part of her. Upon implantation, it will develop as a set of cells that is fed by her blood supply. The overwhelming majority of the picograms of its mass come from her ovum, which has been a part of her body since before she was born.
That doesn’t change as the blastocyte becomes an embryo, or as the embryo becomes a fetus. It nourishes from what she eats. She hosts it.
It changes when the baby is delivered and the umbilical cord is cut.
There is no really legitimate analogue situation to compare it to. It’s unique.
Well, actually, you can compare it to the pregnancies of other species. I’ve had kitty cats, both male and female. I’ve had a pregnant momcat who gave birth in my closet. She bit through the little sacs enclosing the kittenlets and nosed and nuzzled them and three of them she selected for full attention and licked them and they began mewing and soon were nursing. There was a fourth that she decided, for whatever catreasons seemed appropriate to her, to regard as “not a kitten” although it was twitching and writhing. After a little while, it wasn’t. Would you have opted to challenge her authority to make such decisions? (I would not advise that. She was a formidable cat and might make equally cold calculating decisions about you).
Seriously, folks. Here’s a situation where there’s clearly a life form but it is also simultaneously a part of the woman’s body, it’s HER, it’s reproduction, it’s what being female is in substantial aspect, the sense in which being female is different from being male, and much of the rest of it is the price tag associated with this, i.e., periods and whatnot. At the time that she’s pregnant, she’s the most invested in the situation. It could be her baby, she could give birth. It could be a grossly inconvenient pregnancy that massively disrupts her life. It could be the fulfillment of long hopes and dreams or an intrusive problem to be dealt with. Who the fuck are you to question what she chooses to do in that situation? It’s not your situation. You’re on the fucking sidelines.
Female creatures, from kitty cat to the cute gal down the street to your Aunt Stacey, make difficult decisions. Life and death decisions. Pregnancy decisions. Deal with that, but get out of their way.
No subterfuge, I think this is your real motive for the thread because your narrative says so:
You see problems with the framework you had, but I think those problems can be resolved. I just posted my resolutions, but apparently you still have doubts. What’s troubling you?
~Max