Sklansky on Abortion

[hmkpoker]

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Is the nature of personhood really that important? Since rational people clearly can't agree on a definition, maybe we should we should just go and ask the irresponsible people who get pregnant by accident to deal with the consequences of their actions. At least until it is proven more substantially that a cell/fetus/human life form/person is not worth saving at the expense of a 22 year old's party years.

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Let's prove more substantially that a cell/fetus IS worth saving.

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Kip, I hope you don't mind if I pop in here, I've been probing BTirish in a related area so I'm interested in his comments here. While you're waiting, would you mind commenting on this aspect of your statements-
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Their brain functionality was either identical with their personhood, or completely required for it. Either way, no brain means no person.

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"The mind is what the brain does" is perhaps the simplest way I can express how it appears to me. "Me-ness" is an emergent property of the brain. Running only exists while I'm running and when I'm sitting I'm a sitter not a runner. I'd love to hear your comments, even "that's idiotic because ... " since you seem very able to finish a 'because' statement with some clarity.
I'm not a cartesian or xtrian dualist but I seem to differentiate mind and brain in a stronger sense than you perhaps do ( it's that aspect that I'd like to hear a bit more on) or refer me to a thread you've covered it on
thanks

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I agree with you that the "mind" (and the other "personhood" qualities that I listed: thought, feeling/emotion, personality) are emergent properties of brain activity. I am giving the dualist an "out" by allowing for the existence of a soul, but still arguing that the soul is dependent upon the brain functions in order to express personhood.

We don't have to have a "soul-meter" to tell if someone is dead, in other words. We can just measure their brain activity to determine if they are alive. It is a simple step from here to say that same criteria that determines the end of personhood (ie. death), should also be used to determine the beginning of personhood.

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Is the nature of personhood really that important? Since rational people clearly can't agree on a definition, maybe we should we should just go and ask the irresponsible people who get pregnant by accident to deal with the consequences of their actions. At least until it is proven more substantially that a cell/fetus/human life form/person is not worth saving at the expense of a 22 year old's party years.

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Let's prove more substantially that a cell/fetus IS worth saving.

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Exactly.

Do we make a chain smoker deal with their lung cancer until we prove that the cancer cells are not people? Do we make a cell-phone user (lol) deal with their brain tumor before we decide that tumor is not a person?

I don't think you can prove to everyone's satisfaction that it is either worth saving OR worth destroying.

Since by default, a person will be born, I think the burden of proof is on those who want to intervene.

Regardless, we can't all agree on the value of what is being lost when a pregnancy is terminated. But what is that value being weighed against anyway?

I can understand a debate over saving the mother's life or the child's. But dumping something that may or may not be a legitimate life so that an adult isn't inconvenienced?

I just don't think it makes sense.

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Is the nature of personhood really that important? Since rational people clearly can't agree on a definition, maybe we should we should just go and ask the irresponsible people who get pregnant by accident to deal with the consequences of their actions. At least until it is proven more substantially that a cell/fetus/human life form/person is not worth saving at the expense of a 22 year old's party years.

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Let's prove more substantially that a cell/fetus IS worth saving.

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Exactly.

Do we make a chain smoker deal with their lung cancer until we prove that the cancer cells are not people? Do we make a cell-phone user (lol) deal with their brain tumor before we decide that tumor is not a person?

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Lung cancer and brain tumors are life threatening disaeses. That's an irrelevant comparison.

[Joey Legend]

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If you want to be consistent, you should use the same criteria to denote when a person ceases to exist. If you look at the Terry Schiavo case, you can see what science thinks we should look at: higher brain activity. Before you get it, you are't a person. After you lose it, you aren't a person. In either case, the family is the one that gets to decide what happens with the body.

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I do not think you can equate these two things at all. In the case of Terri Schiavo, you of corse remember that there was a significant controversy between family members on what should be done with the body. This controversy did not only deal with her current mental state, but also with her prospects to “get better” and heal the damage in her brain. After life was terminated an important after-the-fact justification was the autopsy that showed Schiavo’s brain was destroyed beyond the ability to ever repair itself in any significant fashion, at least according to our current scientific understanding. You cannot say this about a fetus or small infant. While Schiavo would have, in all probability, never again developed higher brain facility, the fetus or small infant almost defiantly will. Schiavo’s life was terminated because her future contained nothing but brain death. Based on this I would argue that an otherwise healthy fetus or infant should not be terminated because, despite its current state of understanding, its future contains certain “higher brain life.”

Would it have been just as acceptable to terminate Shiavo’s life if the prevailing medical opinion was that she would achieve “higher brain function” within months? I think the answer is clearly no. Even if science believed that should would loose all memory of who she was and in essence be a “new person” I think the answer is still clearly no.

As humans we have the ability to project ourselves into the future. We understand that actions taken in the present can have no effects at the current time may have very negative impacts on the future. Our criminal code takes this into account. If a person makes a bomb, and gives it to a dangerous gangster, who uses it to kill a family, the bomb-maker is certainly culpable. If I were to knock a person unconscious, making them unaware at least for awhile, and then killed them would I be committing less of a crime than if I’d walked up to an aware person, and killed them outright?

BTirish -

From this other thread, you stated:

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Even if your brain was not exhibiting actual higher functions, the matter of your brain and the rest of your body obviously still had to be capable of it (absolutely speaking) in order for the doctors to revive you.

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And...

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If there is any natural means by which someone can be revived from whatever deficient state they're in, then they are not dead. If there is no possible natural means whatsoever (in reality, not just according to what we know) to revive someone, then that person is dead.

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Intersting. It seems like you are saying a person's brain has to be capable of functioning in order to be revived, and therefore "alive". I agree (almost). Which is why I don't think a zygote without a brain can be a person.

[Joey Legend]

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Really, at least in America, the morality of abortion is pretty much moot. The Supreme Court cannot make abortion illegal.

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Umm, thats a pretty strong statement there, I'd like to see you back it up a little bit... It's my understanding that the Supreme Courts allowing of abortion falls on the most shakey of "constitutional" rights, the right to privacy..which is no where mentioned by name in the constitution, and a person could make a strong case that it was "invented" by the court.. I'm not saying I would make such a case, but it could be made.

Still, there are exceptions to other rights in the constitution, yelling fire in a crowded theater is the classic example.

I know that the Supreme Court has ruled Abortion as federally legal in the past, but that does not neccecarily say anything about the future. The Supreme Court once said it was okay to own people as slaves (Dred Scott case) but that's certainly not the way things are now

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Is the nature of personhood really that important? Since rational people clearly can't agree on a definition, maybe we should we should just go and ask the irresponsible people who get pregnant by accident to deal with the consequences of their actions. At least until it is proven more substantially that a cell/fetus/human life form/person is not worth saving at the expense of a 22 year old's party years.

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Let's prove more substantially that a cell/fetus IS worth saving.

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Exactly.

Do we make a chain smoker deal with their lung cancer until we prove that the cancer cells are not people? Do we make a cell-phone user (lol) deal with their brain tumor before we decide that tumor is not a person?

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Lung cancer and brain tumors are life threatening disaeses. That's an irrelevant comparison.

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How about removing a mole for cosmetic purposes, then?

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Since by default, a person will be born, I think the burden of proof is on those who want to intervene.

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I've provided proof (as much as I can see could be provided by either side). It's rational, consistent, and practical.

By default, most embryos are miscarried.

A sperm and an egg have the potential to become a person too... but, we don't care about terminating them.