steve v wrote:
--- slimvirgin(a)gmail.com wrote:
Well, "personhood" in this case is a kind of misnomer
for "humanity." Hence debates regarding the humanity
of the fetus are also included even though, yes,
"personhood" is a social (hence, legal) definition,
and humanity is a universal (and coincidentally,
biological) definition.
SV
You say that "personhood" is a social/legal definition, but I don't
think that's the best way to describe it in this context. When you talk
about things like moral obligation, and what we are morally obligated to
and what we aren't, you are using a philosophical definition of
"person". And in that sense, it seems clear to me that a fetus is not a
person.
It's coincedental that I'm in the middle of a rewrite of [[Categorical
imperative]] because I can give you an example of a view of an eminent
moral philosopher on this very issue, that is, the view of Immanuel
Kant: "Beings whose existence depends, not on our will, but on nature,
have none the less, if they are non-rational beings, only a relative
value as means and are consequently called /things/. Rational beings, on
the other hand, are called /persons/ because their nature already marks
them out as ends in themselves--that is, as something which ought not be
used merely as a means--and consequently imposes to that extent a limit
on arbitrary treatment of them."
Kant was talking mainly about animals in the above passage, but the it
works just as well for the unborn. His conclusion (the argument is
around 90 pages long) more or less boils down to this: The only
objective basis for moral obligation comes from respect of the
autonomously rational powers of a person. If you aren't rational, you're
not a person, and therefore you exist only as a means to some other end.
So feelings of moral obligation to /things/ must be tied up with some
subjective considerations, like your personal feelings about the matter.
It's not different from being sentimental about a family heirloom, or
crying when a beatiful work of art is destroyed. It's a sense of loss,
but it has no moral content, because it is not a person. So Kant would
be another person who agrees that an unborn fetus a part of a woman's
body, not a person, and not a thing to which anyone is morally obligated
in any way.
Whether you agree with this argument or not isn't my point: What I'm
pointing out here is that this is a moral problem, and is therefore more
in the realm of philosophy than of law. If you want to support the
notion that we are morally obligated to non-persons because they have
human DNA, or because they might some day become a person, you're going
to have to come up with a rational and binding philosophical argument to
that effect that isn't based on anyone's feelings.
And yes, it would be intensely POV to make the jump from (human tissue)
-> (person) -> (moral obligation). As I understand it, the consensus
among moral philosophers these days is that such a jump would be ridiculous.
- Ryan