yguy

Send one of 'em to this thread.

You have no idea whether it's "hocus-pocusy" or not. You only know what the "cognoscenti" think they know...and if they equate thinking with consciousness, as so many here do, they don't know much.

It you had any basis for believing that, you could state with authority that consciousness dies with the body - but you can't.

yguy

A dog could be said to have a form of consciousness as well, but it is not a human being. Neither is a sperm, because no two of them can ever get together and grow into a human being.

Loren Pechtel

Originally posted by long winded fool
If you're arguing that consciousness is what ought to grant the right to life, then lets break it down into logical possibilities:

A living thing has the right to its life if:

1. it is presently conscious. (excludes asleep life)
2. it presently has the ability to become conscious. (includes sleeping life, excludes life in a coma)
3. it has been conscious in the past. (circular. Can never have a first conscious act without a history of conscious acts, therefore consciousness can never logically exist.)
4. it presently has the ability to be conscious in the future. (circular. Can never have a last conscious act without the ability to be conscious in the future, therefore consciousness can never logically exist.)

Actually, all you need is #3 and #4. One's current state isn't really relevant. Your discarding them as circular does not make sense--we are definining personhood, not conciousness. There is a time of first conciousness and a time of last conciousness. As far as I'm concerned, personhood extends from those two points.

Arguing over which humans can be discriminated against by the label of "person" is pointless in a society of equal rights.

Blood sample in the lab. Human? Yes. Person? No.

It does not follow to say that, because E.T. ought to have the right to life, not all humans ought to have the right to life. All humans plus any additional species containing persons ought to have the right to life. The need to ensure that certain non-human persons have the right to life cannot logically be used to exclude non-person humans from the right to life.

The reason ET is brought up is that any reasonable definition of personhood must include him. That shoots down definitions based on genetics. The first non-human person we encounter might very well not *HAVE* genetics--it might be a computer program.

We seem to agree that all persons ought to have the right to life. If any species contains persons, it is logical to assume that all members of the species are, or given time have the ability to become, persons. Therefore, all members of said species ought to have the right to life, if nothing else, whether they are all persons at any given time or not.

No. All persons have the right to life. The mere fact that something might become a person in the future does not grant a right to life.

"Person" should never be redefined to exclude some members of a species while including others, if equal inalienable rights is a good thing.

Note that the definition being discussed excludes thoses in irreversible comas. Note that the law tends to see it the same way.

yguy

Consent is implicit when the pregnancy is the result of consensual sex and the woman is aware that sex may lead to pregancy. The decision to abort is tantamount to a unilateral breach of contract, at the very least. You might as well donate your kidney to someone and then decide later that is more valuable to you than you thought.

Alonzo Fyfe

No, a person who performs an action does not consent to everything that might result from that action. This is particularly the case where an individual has taken positive action to prevent a particular consequence -- this alone is taken as evidence of a lack of consent, though it is not necessary.

Otherwise, a woman who walks down an dark alley at night "consents" to sex with anybody who might attack her, simply because she knows that walking down a dark alley increases the chance that she may be attacked. It would be laughable for anybody to argue a defense of rape on the grounds that the victim "consented" based on the fact that "she knew a rape might happen."

Indeed, if we were to adopt your definition of consent, there would never be an instance of noconsent. We are always aware of an infinite number of possibilities that may result from our action. Your definition would have us always consenting to all of them simply based on the knowieldge that they might happen.

Also of significance, your response to point (2) does not allow you to skip past point (1). It still needs to be addressed.

yguy

Oh, goody - another one-size-fits-all C&P.

Of course we can't. The burden of proof lies with those who condone the killing of an entity whose humanity is in doubt to show that it is not a human being.

It doesn't matter. Fetuses have been shown to have some level of consciousness, from which it follows that embryos or even zygotes may also have it. If they do, deliberately killing them is murder.

So what?

Again, that's your problem, not mine.

No, because it is yet to be shown that consciousness is dependent on brain function. Even after death, we don't know that consciousness ceases to exist.

If right to life is to be denied on the basis that the entity is dependent on other humans for survival, why does an infant have the right to life?

Swell. Since there is no intent on the part of the mother to cause this, it's not murder.

Guess that's His lookout, huh?

Murder is unjust killing. Provide evidence that any of these killings were unjust, and we can all get together in a class action suit against the Big Guy.

There is no scientific basis for such an assertion, especially with regard to embryos. A time honored catechism it certainly is, but a proven fact it is just as certainly not.

As long as third-worlders keep screwing each other without any regard for the welfare of their progeny, I likewise have no sympathy for them.

Unwanted pregnancies are not caused by the lack of availability of abortion.



Since I don't enslave women, I guess the question doesnt appl to me.

If we are to base societal mores on the idea that someone other than parents are responsible for providing love to a child, we can hardly escape a Huxleyan Brave New World.

Only if she resents the child for existing.

Persons can reasonably be expected to act responsibly, rather than being degraded to slave status by the presumption of irresponsibility.

But you don't know when that point in fetal development is.

Baloney. Nothing in any of these clauses protects the right to life of slaves. To say someone can be counted as 3/5 of a person for tax purposes is hardly an acknowledgement of personhood.

yguy

This is not comparable in the least to the relationship between the woman and the fetus, since the rapist has a choice as to whether to attack the woman, whereas a fetus' existence is entirely out of its control.

Ultimately, that may well be true - with the exception of having been conceived.

But most such possibilities are so theoretical as to be meaningless. OTOH, if you DWI, you obviously don't explicitly consent to being pulled over, because you are counting on it not happening. The consent is implied in the act of driving; likewise a woman implies consent to the possibility of being impregnated by copulating.

I have. Read my posts in the last couple of pages.

Alonzo Fyfe

Take away the ability to choose from the counter-example. Use whatever method suits you -- the rapist has been hypnotized by an evil psychologist, or a brain implant compells the behavior. None of this matters. Person B's level of need or compulsion simply has zero relevance to whether or not Person A consents or does not consent.

yguy

If the rapist wasn't acting under his own volition, HE would be guiltless, but the hypnotist or implanter would not - some entity has culpability. The only people with any culpability in the relationship between a fetus conceived by consensual sex and the mother are the parents.

Alonzo Fyfe

Now, you are attempting to define nonconsent in terms of culpability, when culpability itself is determined by nonconsent.

It would be difficult to find a better example of the fallacy of circular reasoning.