Youre absolutely right. But saying its only in the
realm of philosophy contradicts the NPOV view. Again,
there is no one realm for this discussion --its
political, religious, ethicial, social, etc. Thus, the
only thing (regardless of the neat heirarchies of
classical philosophy) is the basic association between
the arbitrary concept of the "fetus" and the accepted
concept of "human." With that out of the way, the rest
can be relegated to POV1, POV2, etc. Claiming that its
not clear, or that there is no possible general
agreement is not truly NPOV.
SV
Thanks, everyone
--- Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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
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