Neurodiversity, Persons, and Essences

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No he wouldn't. He might have argued that they shouldn't be classified as persons, but I doubt he's ever argued that they're not human.


As far as I'm aware, Singer's position is: if experiments on non-human animals are justifiable, then so are experiments on severely ret*d humans and infant humans.


The amount of suffering caused by our decision to draw a line around humans and see ourselves as morally special is absolutely unimaginable. The current consensus is hardly a good alternative to Singer's suggestions.

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This I can agree with somewhat. Particularly if useful just means useful.

Persons and humans topic

I think I understand where you are going with this now, since others have commented. Humans can be proven to be via DNA, but at what point is a human a person, I suppose in the sense of being aware, having an imagination, etc, or at least an ordinary intelligence to be averagely functioning in the world.

I would imagine that less than 150 years ago severely challenged infants born would be left to die (obviously we did not have the technology to assist in maintaining infants with severe neurological/physical challenges in the 1800s to more recently) and the doctor would quietly agree with this and there would be no repercussions and as no intervention was possible.

Women were not considered voting persons in the West until governments granted them this right. So personhood here is a political thing.

Nazis had a list of human life not worthy of life and this list was exclusively human. We know that they eliminated special needs persons and made videos of them to demonstrate just how unworthy of life they were. In China female infanticide was practiced, as the culture had this one child per family rule and many families of couse preferred boys. (Abortion is a another topic. In this post I am referring to infants born alive and breathing after the cord is cut. If they are gasping then intervention at this point is humanely warranted.)

I believe that all humans are persons, no matter what ability, and all have essences, no matter if they can show/prove this (via communication, art, craft, whatever). Being a belief I suppose it is not a falsifiable premise and is not a theory (as is evolution) but is a moral and ethical premise.

I hope this helps.

I suppose then the question becomes "what is a human?". If I show you a living liver, with its own unique DNA, I doubt you would consider it to be human. If I showed you a decapitated body though, and one that was still functioning, would that be human? If I showed you a vegetable, with a non-working brain, would that be human? A coma patient that would never recover then? Is there a solid line? If so, then where? If not, then how do we see into the essence?

Even further, how human must the DNA be to consider a being a person? I mean, species are conventional categories, rather than strict lines, so if I genetically engineered a being, what line would it cross to stop being human under your system?

This isn't to say that you are wrong, but there are a lot of issues.

Drawing the human line topic

I suppose my premise is more of a moral/ethical premise, as I mentioned. Is this human liver for transplant? Or is it jus tbeing studiedd on an autopsy table? Swine parts are still used for diabestes treatment, or at least they were. To me the human is the living and breathing body, even if comatose, if there is some vestige of hope that it might be revived (not cryogenics, at least, not yet).

The decapitated body is brain dead because there is no viable ECG, as there is no brain. A heart can still beat, but apart from perhaps keeping the body for donar transplant in a humane way (at the wishes of the deceased and family), or even being kept viable for transplant in a cooler, the decapitated body is no longer human. But this does not mean to treat the body disrespectfully, because the body was once a human being and a person.

All humans created by the union of sperm and egg and born from a womb have human DNA, should they be tested. The frozen potential human embryos are not persons, and in my book, do not count, but if I had a store of them and they were destroyed I would be pissed and may have a legal case.

There are lots of issues, but I am trying to be as consistent as possible in what I consider human and personable. A genetically engineered body or a borg (a future? scenario) would need to be legally dealt with fairly, it is hoped.

Sentient, intelligent (not high-intelligent, simply having basic cognitive function) lifeforms. This includes turing-level bots.
However in real life this isn't an absolute, and non-intelligent, and even non-sentient humans will be maintained as people.

I liken this to the manner that animal rights activists care a lot more about monkey and puppy testing than snakes or reptiles. If these issues come up, you can only be sure that philosophy will not dictate what happens. It will be how the masses feel.

District 9 is worth a look.

Last edited by Asmodeus on 17 Jul 2010, 2:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

If we had genetically engineered a dog to have as complex a brain as a human, and it could think and talk like you or me, would it still be fine to use it for testing?

If a dog were a person then it would not be ethical to do tests on it without its consent.

ruveyn

The problem with *only* a genetic definition is that it includes cell cultures and tumors and the like. What I would propose is this: defining a human being/person as any living entity with (1) Homo sapiens DNA and (2) a live cerebral cortex. This would include all people, including the most severely ret*d, brain-damaged people, but would exclude brain-dead organ donors, tumors, cell cultures, liver cells and the like.

Just as an aside: Have you ever read Singer's work? I have, and although I don't agree with his more extreme ideas (like the ones you mention), some of his less extreme ideas are thought provoking.

~Kate

That's the case.



Again, correct.


Agreed. That's why I said that some of his less extreme ideas are very thought-provoking and really should be looked at.

~Kate

The problem I have with "Homo sapiens DNA" (or at least one of them) is that "homo sapiens DNA" as much as many of our genetic categories, is an ad hoc category. We construct it because it is useful, not because there is some underlying essential nature to "homo sapiens DNA". As it stands, while we can distinguish in practice between a human and neanderthal genome, the problem is that we now believe interbreeding occurred between the two groups. So, let's say that there is a half-breed sapiens-neanderthalensis, is it a person? Or not? Where is the real genetic line that we would draw for any interbreed person? I don't think that such a line exists, but it is hard to make a useful rule about individuals of such a nature. Now, this is obviously a hypothetical, but the issue is that the hypothetical undermines a lot of very basic philosophical assumptions.

Also, I have not read Singer's work, but from what I know about it, he provides a real challenge for us in our practical lives, both in his push to increase the well-being of the Third World, but also in his attempts to get us to rethink ethical matters involving animals.

I would suggest a functioning cerebral cortex, or an analogous structure (such as a sufficiently advanced AI, etc), and that the surrounding connected tissue/matter is considered under the ownership of, or integral to, that thing.

That way it makes sense in regard to transhumans, in that additions to the body are part of the person, as well as in the event of complete replacement (through retrofitting body parts) the person retains their personship.

It can't be purely genetic. If I take some of my tissue in the lab and make a functioning brainless human body, it isn't a person; it's an organ farm.

A cursory glance at womens suffrage indicates easily that "person" is defined legally. Morals, extant for millennia, were not exceedingly quick to grant a little equality to the half the worlds population.

A happenstance reading of the facts of slavery suggests that personhood is defined only socially. Some light reading on 1960s Canadian law shows that until then native Canadians were not defined as people. Half a minutes exercise on the matter of partnership benefits to gays leads one to discover morality still isnt quite there. An extended case study on genital mutilation, arranged marriage, honor killings and genocide is pretty damn fine proof that morality can have some (un)funny ideas about what a person is.

I could go on and on, but the point is made: The concept of person is enforced by force of cold hard law and not morality at all. And the same goes for the definition of human.

I am also skeptical of a species having an "essence". Plus, I also don't get this "imagination" measure...hmmm....would it be okay to eat them? I don't think so.

~Kate

Yes, his writings on the situation in Third World countries are extremely thought-provoking. It is very easy to forget about what goes on there and that their situation is worse than even the poorest of us in the US or other developed countries. If you're sitting here typing at a computer, you're not as bad off as they are.

As far as sentient aliens, hybrid forms, etc, I think that would have to be re-analyzed should those situations come up. If there were such life forms discovered which had equivalent sentience, consciousness, awareness, and thought to what we consider persons, by all means they should be afforded personhood as well, no matter what their genetic composition. At this time, though, Homo sapiens is the only genetic makeup we know of that has those qualities. Yeah, it's hard to put a finger on, but important to keep an open mind about to avoid serious injustice.

~Kate

I can see that to some extent. It is just always... interesting to try to understand these issues abstractly to see where we might already have questionable behavior. I mean, the animal rights case is in many ways strong, but the strength of it, along with the on-going rejection of it seems to show some absurdity somewhere in our thinking.