I dont think you have the right to pick who lives and who dies based on who you feel is a person
you define person as one thing I define person as another thing
a dog is not a person but they are more aware than a person in a coma, sorry but I think its sick and twisted to want thier body parts
please tell me your not American and you are from some other country
We most certainly have the right to adopt certain ethical standards regarding killing, and currently do, obviously.
What rational purpose is there for not judging the moral status of beings based on the level of self-awareness and rationality that they possess?
This is a discussion that will be whatever we make it. I offered both a legal factor and a moral one. I agree that the legal definitions change periodically due to the whims of the legislature or courts. In this case I was arguing that there is a long tradition of using the definition that makes a fetus a person while the newer definition should be recognized for what it is; a perversion of common sense just like the perversion of common sense that made a black man less than a full person.
I did not intend to engage in a discussion of the legal status of personhood, but a discussion of its ethical status. A fetus cannot be granted an ethical definition of personhood by the law any more than the ethical crime of murder might be defined away by the law. Regardless of its legal status, it retains an ethical status separate from that.
As for the issue of black people, what rational basis is there for considering black people morally inferior to white people? I cannot conceive of any. Conversely, I
can conceive of a rational basis for considering a fetus to not be a person, that being that it is not a self-aware being, and thus cannot form desires about its own future or continued existence.
I tis a reference to consciousness as well as every single other quality of personhood. Persons who are asleep stop being able to do certain things that we recognize as being things that persons can do. Unconsciousness goes beyond sleep as even people who are asleep have a conscious state. But people who are in a coma also are still considered persons even though they now lack the ability to talk and think at a certain level.
This does not apply to people who are asleep. People who are asleep have formed rational moral preferences and interests about the future that would be inhibited were they killed in their sleep. They have an interest in continuing their lives and completing projects and activities that they have planned for the future, and killing them in their sleep would function as an inhibition of that interest. I still think it ought to be
permissible, (not compulsory), to kill humans in persistent vegetative states if they have expressed no preference one way or the other about what ought to be done to them should they enter such a state for the reason that they have lost the capacity to form preferences and interests about the future.
I see that now faced with the knowledge that there are no people lacking any quality that we fail to call persons except feti you add a new criteria. Now according to you we can call people who lack certain qualities persons only if they previously had that quality. I reject you efforts to raise the bar. I also reject your efforts to define personhood in your narrow way that you want it to be defined.
There is no "raising of the bar" involved. Perhaps you merely had not delved into that component of my belief previously, and were thus unaware of it. I also wonder what logical reason you have against considering my definition of personhood to be rational.
Neither the previous capacity for thinking or feeling nor the present capacity for thinking or feeling defines a person.
There is no rational purpose for this. Beings that are self-aware have the capacity to form preferences and desires about their continued existence, whereas beings that are not do not have such a capacity. Hence, self-aware beings that had their desires or interests to continue their lives inhibited or violated would suffer, whereas a being incapable of forming such interests or desires would not. I think it's a fairly fundamental imperative of existence to avoid suffering and pursue happiness, so what specific objection do you have to my definition of personhood?
What defines a person is what has always defined a person - simply being alive and the offspring of other persons. Trees produce trees, tigers produce tigers and persons produce persons. Simple. The tree is a part of that species when it has the genetic material unique to a tree. A tiger is a tiger as soon as it has the genetic matierial unique to tigers. And a person is a person as soon as it has the genetic material unique to persons.
The word person has always been used synonymously with human. Both legally and in general conversation. The word fetus is just latin for offspring. And no distinction was made between born offspring and unborn offspring until recently.
You have again reverted to legal and colloquial definitions, which are largely irrelevant to and separate from the moral issue. I have stated a case for not considering all humans persons and not considering all nonhumans nonpersons. You have not stated any rational objection to this. If you have one, I would be interested in hearing it.
I do not need to resort to mental gymnastics to define someone as not a person. I use the same common sense that just about any three year old child can use. Just about any three year old child knows what a person is. In the same way take just about any three year old child and show them pictures of various cats and dogs and they can tell you which is which. Go ahead and ask them about the oddest cat and the oddest dog and they can still tell even if they have never known of that particular breed before. Ask this three year old about a black person or a pygmy or a Down's syndrome person and they can all tell you that they are person's. It isn't until they get older and jaded that they then might try to make a case that a black person or an American Indian is not a person - in the face of obvious evidence. In the same way every unjaded pregnant mother knows that she has a "baby on board" and not a tiger.
I am an American Indian, so please do not attempt to portray me as being racist or prejudiced against American Indians. The belief of a three year old child is still not relevant to the moral issue. A three year old child could have been taught to call a dog a cat and a cat a dog. That would not change their characteristics. A three year old could have been taught to call excrement perfume. That would not change its characteristics.
I await your rational objection to my definition of personhood.
