|
|
|
Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2009 : 01:21:57 [Permalink]
|
What distinguishes a late-stage fetus or infant from an animal? Without considering potentiality for personhood (I think defining personhood by species falls into this category), if the capacities to feel pain, learn, and think are the sufficient conditions, should animals not also fall into the same category?
This seems almost inevitable unless we decide the mental capacity of the infant is somehow better than that of animals (or at least the less intelligent animals). However, making mental capacity the metric may necessitate mentally retarded persons or brain-dead persons not be considered equally important persons. |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
 |
|
|
Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2009 : 09:21:08 [Permalink]
|
First if all, the brain expand and greatly gain in complexity in the last stages of pregnancies and become much more similar to that of adult humans than that of non hominids mammals.
Even in what you call 'retarded' people, the brains also are mostly the same than that of 'normal' adults. The idea that mentally handicapped people would be somewhat close to non hominid mammals in their thinking is wrong in many levels.
You will notice how I precise non hominids. Other great apes are indeed much closer to us. The idea that chimps should be treated with the same respect than human is an interesting idea and one that I would not necessarily disagree with.
I guess my view is not that of a sliding scale but rather of an arbitrary threshold in brain development. Infants, including mentally handicapped ones, are comfortably above the threshold. Some great apes may be too, depending on where you place the bar.
As for brain-dead persons, yeah, they should not considered equally important person. They should not be considered persons, at all anymore. They are warmed-up meat by all objective analyse.
|
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
|
|
|
Machi4velli
SFN Regular
USA
854 Posts |
Posted - 03/30/2009 : 10:15:39 [Permalink]
|
| Right, to maintain consistency with a certain degree of mental capacity being sufficient for personhood, I think we almost have to place the most intelligent animals in the same category. (But that is not the only possible argument for personhood of course.) |
"Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
-Giordano Bruno
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge."
-Stephen Hawking
"Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable"
-Albert Camus |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Obama to restore stem cell funding
