Actually, given my knowledge of biology, I have a hard time figuring out how to use these criteria but not find dissociated skin cells (e.g., from scratching) as 'innocent people'.
'Personhood' Ammendment in Mississippi
- Thread starter Whiskey_Lord
- Start date
Is a fluffed off skin cell laying on the floor of your home going to naturally develop into a walking talking adult in 18 years? A fertilized egg naturally will, unless that process is interrupted. It could be interrupted by a miscarriage, yes, but that is also an act of nature and not comparable to the willful act of an abortion.
aelf
Ashen One
I'm not sure what you mean by "contain[ing] unique life". It seems to be a question of the potential to become human life, rather than of something 'containing life', which is presently a very vague and probably meaningless phrase (unless you're positing the existence of a soul within a fertilised egg or something, which is a notion that again tends towards the religious). I'd agree that a fertilised egg is more likely to become human life, on average, than an egg or a sperm, but where is the cutoff point? How do you decide at which point the likelihood is too much to be trifled with?
AL_DA_GREAT
amour absinthe révolution
Sperm, less than one of your cell. Doesn't have what it takes to develop into anything. Has no unique DNA.
Fertilized eggs have a unique DNA and are not just half of a parent but a new life.
A naturally fertilized egg laying on the floor of my home will certainly NOT develop into an adult! You're distinguishing the cases functionally, not biologically. If I create an embryo on the floor (or toss it into a menstrual pad after it fails to implant), it will die just as certainly as a skin cell would. Are you saying that an embryo in a womb has a different moral status than one in a petri dish? I don't think so! It's certainly not true of a 30 week fetus! A 30 week fetus in a womb has the same moral status as one in an incubator.
Um, okay you lost me. What would a fertilized egg be doing on your floor (or a petri dish for that matter), and what would a dead skin cell be doing in a womb? We're not fish, the female doesn't squeeze the egg out into the wild and then have the man come along and do his deed all over the egg.
And I'm not being obtuse, but let's face it you are smarter than me. So explain to me where you're going with this because I just don't get it.
Man and woman have sex and egg gets fertilized. Unless there is some sort of interruption to the process, that fertilized egg will develop, be born, and be a walking talking member of society.
Now that can be interrupted by a miscarriage in the womb, a heart attack at 50, or any other types of natural causes. It can also be interrupted by an abortion at 1 month or a gunshot at 20 years. That's how I view it and I am sorry if that is too simplistic for you guys, but it's really that simple for me.
And I'm not being obtuse, but let's face it you are smarter than me. So explain to me where you're going with this because I just don't get it.
Man and woman have sex and egg gets fertilized. Unless there is some sort of interruption to the process, that fertilized egg will develop, be born, and be a walking talking member of society.
Now that can be interrupted by a miscarriage in the womb, a heart attack at 50, or any other types of natural causes. It can also be interrupted by an abortion at 1 month or a gunshot at 20 years. That's how I view it and I am sorry if that is too simplistic for you guys, but it's really that simple for me.
aelf
Ashen One
You're simply repeating statements now. You haven't given me concrete reasons why I should treat a fertilised egg as a "unique life".
The unique DNA argument might be an attempt, but I'm not sure what to make of it. Is the uniqueness of DNA something that is to be valued? Why?
What about cases where a zygote, embryo (I really should have been saying "embryo" rather than "fetus" - somehow I forgot about the former) or fetus require intervention in order to develop into a functional person? Is not intervening where possible grounds for saying that a murder has been committed?
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Apart from the issues I have of person hood, maybe this analogy will help. Probably a bad one, but I just thought of it. Treating the fertilised egg as a person for argument's sake.
Millions of people die of starvation around the world. Any one of us can prevent some of them dying by making an effort needed to keep them alive. Does this mean we murdered the people who died from starvation? It's inaction that kills them.
The fertilised egg will also die if you take the woman out of the equation. If the woman opts not to assist the fertilised egg in it's development it dies. It's inaction that kills it.
In what way is forcing the woman to assist the egg in it's development less intrusive than forcing every single one of us to make us make the effort of saving the people who die from starvation?
Millions of people die of starvation around the world. Any one of us can prevent some of them dying by making an effort needed to keep them alive. Does this mean we murdered the people who died from starvation? It's inaction that kills them.
The fertilised egg will also die if you take the woman out of the equation. If the woman opts not to assist the fertilised egg in it's development it dies. It's inaction that kills it.
In what way is forcing the woman to assist the egg in it's development less intrusive than forcing every single one of us to make us make the effort of saving the people who die from starvation?
I'm just trying to figure out if the moral status of an embryo is different based on whether it's in the womb or if it's not. As far as I can tell, the moral status of 'a person' is independent of the location, and so the location doesn't matter. But that doesn't seem to be true of embryos.
Additionally, I don't like invoking 'what the embryo will do naturally', because it's deterministic reasoning, where the universe 'decides' on what will be. Why should we accept people leaving things to chance?. 'Naturalness' doesn't matter when it comes to personhood. A person produced in an artificial womb is of the same moral status as one from a woman. Twins produced because the woman was fed a drug that induces twinning have the same moral status as natural twins.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
Bingo, use the "brain life" vs "brain death" criterion. Just what I would have said.
Having read El Mac's explanation, I also just don't get it. What do skin cells have to do with anything? Why bring them up?
Behind The Mask
King
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2010
- Messages
- 776
I think I might understand it, at least in part, though I might still be wrong...
His arguement focuses on the aspect of 'natural'; that is the arguement that an embryo will develop naturally into a human being.
He proposes alt. methods that may be deemed unnatural and asks if the offspring from those would be held to the same standard; and thus, I think, serving to discredit the original stance of naturalism.
This at least is what I gathered from his previous post, but i may be wrong.
However, I do feel he makes some good points that I havent heard argued before (or at least, I don't recall hearing)
His arguement focuses on the aspect of 'natural'; that is the arguement that an embryo will develop naturally into a human being.
He proposes alt. methods that may be deemed unnatural and asks if the offspring from those would be held to the same standard; and thus, I think, serving to discredit the original stance of naturalism.
This at least is what I gathered from his previous post, but i may be wrong.
However, I do feel he makes some good points that I havent heard argued before (or at least, I don't recall hearing)
woody60707
Deity
1st good post in here.
Combat Ingrid
Spy Unit
You guys are turning this into a much too abstract debate. You're forgetting about the people that this issue really revolves around. Let me introduce you to some of my friends:
From top to bottom they are Mark, Lisa, Ahmed and Yuriko.
Mark was a stubborn young boy who was sure he had what it took to become a differentiated muscle cell. His mother, who is equally stubborn, would have none of it. As a result, Mark grew increasingly detached from his mother and in the end he literally flushed his life down the toilet...
Lisa is a confident young girl full of energy and future ambitions. She loves to spend her free time undergoing mitosis ("The more of me the merrier!"). We'll certainly see more of her in the future!
Ahmed is pretty much a slacker who prefers to spend his leisure time leaning back with a glucose drink while checking out Lisa's cellular cleavage.
Nevertheless, he doesn't want to disappoint his parents and has committed to going through the cell cycle as many times as it takes to support his family.
Yuriko Poor Yuriko. She was such an adorable young girl who always thought the best of everyone. She greeted the incoming spermatozoon with a big friendly smile and a wide open membrane invagination. [I realize some of you may find her behavior to be morally questionable; however, I personally attribute it to her youthful innocence and playfulness, so please don't judge her too harshly]
In any case, she couldn't cope with the pressure from her parents (who always preferred a boy) and ended up committing apoptosis by slashing her chromosomes...
From top to bottom they are Mark, Lisa, Ahmed and Yuriko.
Mark was a stubborn young boy who was sure he had what it took to become a differentiated muscle cell. His mother, who is equally stubborn, would have none of it. As a result, Mark grew increasingly detached from his mother and in the end he literally flushed his life down the toilet...
Lisa is a confident young girl full of energy and future ambitions. She loves to spend her free time undergoing mitosis ("The more of me the merrier!"). We'll certainly see more of her in the future!
Ahmed is pretty much a slacker who prefers to spend his leisure time leaning back with a glucose drink while checking out Lisa's cellular cleavage.
Nevertheless, he doesn't want to disappoint his parents and has committed to going through the cell cycle as many times as it takes to support his family.
Yuriko Poor Yuriko. She was such an adorable young girl who always thought the best of everyone. She greeted the incoming spermatozoon with a big friendly smile and a wide open membrane invagination. [I realize some of you may find her behavior to be morally questionable; however, I personally attribute it to her youthful innocence and playfulness, so please don't judge her too harshly]
In any case, she couldn't cope with the pressure from her parents (who always preferred a boy) and ended up committing apoptosis by slashing her chromosomes...
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Nice.
woody60707
Deity
Spoiler :
So what the grey area before birth? I doubt anyone would think it would be ok to kill a baby minutes by injection or any other harmless means to the mother. (not counting any criminal charges of battery on the mother)
Sorry, everyone, I'm not trying to be obtuse or rude. The problem is that in biology, things are actually really fuzzy. We give definitions to things often out of convenience, but a defined 'thing' is only obviously different from the 'other things' in specific scenarios. In the real world, there're going to be borderline cases where you're not entirely sure which definition should apply.
A good example is 'species'. As a rule of thumb, it's not a bad idea. But, when we drill into any specific definition of species, we quickly realise that there are actual organisms that are total head-scratchers.
This is where the embryo is, for me. People insist that "it's a person". If I ask why people say that, they'll first be a bit confused and say "Well, because it will grow into a person". It's a good intuition, but it's insufficient. That said, I get what you mean. Because the end result is a human, every stage of that organism's existence is also a person, and that unique organism began with the fusing of the sperm and egg. But I know that your definition of person creates all kinds of fuzzy cases with strange moral implications. And that's why I bring up skin cells.
Let's examine what an embryo is. It's a living human cell that consumes gases and nutrients. It's certainly alive, and it's certainly human. So, what else is it? Well, it's a cell that, if you feed it the right gases, nutrition, and hormones will eventually grow into something that we all agree is a person. If you're wrong in your balance of nutrients you give to it, it will become either something else or it will die. But the right balance makes a baby.
So, what is a skin cell? Well it's a part of you. So, scratch some skin cells off your cheek into your fingernail. What are those? They are living human cells, that need gases and nutrition in order to stay alive. Their discrete beginning (as independent organisms) was when you scratched the skin. Now, here's the next thing. Like the embryo, if you feed them the correct combination of nutrients and hormones, they will turn into a living, breathing, thinking baby. Skin cells can be transdifferentiated, the technology is actually quite graspable.
So, now the moral intuition kicks in. The living baby is certainly a person. What this means is that, according to the original philosophy, the whole way back in its development it was a person, with a discrete beginning occurring when the skin cell was changed from being part of your person into a discrete living human organism (by being scratched off).
Yes, I need a specialised treatment scenario in order to make the skin cell into a person. But an embryo also requires specialised treatment (which it certainly is denied when tossed into a menstrual pad). The fact that someone needed special care to become fully developed doesn't change whether or not they are (or were) a person.
This is why I think of the scratched-off skin cell as a living, human, potential person. And, if I were to create a moral point in which it's moral or immoral to mistreat that human cell, it would be when it grows a functioning brain. And this is not taken lightly! Throughout the world, there're probably billions of human cells growing in laboratories, being differentiated into all types of tissue. Neurons, even. But, imo, we may poison, starve, immolate, suffocate, or vaporise these living, discrete, human cells without any moral issue. BUT, if someone were to differentiate these cells into a thinking fetus, there would come a point in that process where it would be immoral to kill it or mistreat it. We're allowed to do anything we want to these skincells, despite their status as 'potential people', up until we make them into 'a person'. Then we may not (and, as an aside, I'd consider immoral to make a skin cell into a person, unless you were completely confident of the technology (which means that someone else did it who wasn't, and so I would have disapproved there).
If it's immoral to mistreat them when they become 'a person', unless that timepoint is different from when it became a discrete, independent, human life, we become seized up. It's certainly possible to only ever slough off dead skin (after they've died naturally on you), but we don't like the train of logic that says that deliberately scratching roughly (such that you get living cells too) is evil.
This is why (amongst quite a few other reasons, which I'm happy to re-iterate, though I've brought up the lions share in my conversation with _random_) I don't like the idea that an embryo is a person. "Potential person" works just fine. If someone wants to turn a potential person into a baby, I wish them the best. If they choose to do something else with the potential person, for even shallow reasons, I continue to wish them the best. The potential person doesn't matter, but the baby certainly will.
And to tie back to the beginning, if you want to call a baby innocent, I'll happily and certainly agree.
A good example is 'species'. As a rule of thumb, it's not a bad idea. But, when we drill into any specific definition of species, we quickly realise that there are actual organisms that are total head-scratchers.
This is where the embryo is, for me. People insist that "it's a person". If I ask why people say that, they'll first be a bit confused and say "Well, because it will grow into a person". It's a good intuition, but it's insufficient. That said, I get what you mean. Because the end result is a human, every stage of that organism's existence is also a person, and that unique organism began with the fusing of the sperm and egg. But I know that your definition of person creates all kinds of fuzzy cases with strange moral implications. And that's why I bring up skin cells.
Let's examine what an embryo is. It's a living human cell that consumes gases and nutrients. It's certainly alive, and it's certainly human. So, what else is it? Well, it's a cell that, if you feed it the right gases, nutrition, and hormones will eventually grow into something that we all agree is a person. If you're wrong in your balance of nutrients you give to it, it will become either something else or it will die. But the right balance makes a baby.
So, what is a skin cell? Well it's a part of you. So, scratch some skin cells off your cheek into your fingernail. What are those? They are living human cells, that need gases and nutrition in order to stay alive. Their discrete beginning (as independent organisms) was when you scratched the skin. Now, here's the next thing. Like the embryo, if you feed them the correct combination of nutrients and hormones, they will turn into a living, breathing, thinking baby. Skin cells can be transdifferentiated, the technology is actually quite graspable.
So, now the moral intuition kicks in. The living baby is certainly a person. What this means is that, according to the original philosophy, the whole way back in its development it was a person, with a discrete beginning occurring when the skin cell was changed from being part of your person into a discrete living human organism (by being scratched off).
Yes, I need a specialised treatment scenario in order to make the skin cell into a person. But an embryo also requires specialised treatment (which it certainly is denied when tossed into a menstrual pad). The fact that someone needed special care to become fully developed doesn't change whether or not they are (or were) a person.
This is why I think of the scratched-off skin cell as a living, human, potential person. And, if I were to create a moral point in which it's moral or immoral to mistreat that human cell, it would be when it grows a functioning brain. And this is not taken lightly! Throughout the world, there're probably billions of human cells growing in laboratories, being differentiated into all types of tissue. Neurons, even. But, imo, we may poison, starve, immolate, suffocate, or vaporise these living, discrete, human cells without any moral issue. BUT, if someone were to differentiate these cells into a thinking fetus, there would come a point in that process where it would be immoral to kill it or mistreat it. We're allowed to do anything we want to these skincells, despite their status as 'potential people', up until we make them into 'a person'. Then we may not (and, as an aside, I'd consider immoral to make a skin cell into a person, unless you were completely confident of the technology (which means that someone else did it who wasn't, and so I would have disapproved there).
If it's immoral to mistreat them when they become 'a person', unless that timepoint is different from when it became a discrete, independent, human life, we become seized up. It's certainly possible to only ever slough off dead skin (after they've died naturally on you), but we don't like the train of logic that says that deliberately scratching roughly (such that you get living cells too) is evil.
This is why (amongst quite a few other reasons, which I'm happy to re-iterate, though I've brought up the lions share in my conversation with _random_) I don't like the idea that an embryo is a person. "Potential person" works just fine. If someone wants to turn a potential person into a baby, I wish them the best. If they choose to do something else with the potential person, for even shallow reasons, I continue to wish them the best. The potential person doesn't matter, but the baby certainly will.
And to tie back to the beginning, if you want to call a baby innocent, I'll happily and certainly agree.
mangxema
I
This part I think is not necessarily true, depending on what you mean by 'innocent'. If a baby by virtue of developing would kill the mother, it would be justified to abort, since it is in some sense no longer an 'innocent' bystander.
Leonel
Breakfast Connoisseur
Wouldn't this law make the Corporate Personhood thing moot as a corporations can't be conceived with an egg and sperm?
Would you be unable to abort the process of incorporating once you conceived the idea to incorporate?
holy king
Deity
a fertilized human ovocyte? seriously?
edit: oh, for a moment i forgot that's what you guys actually believe. well go on then, i'll stop wondering now.
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