As is often the case this deserves a better treatment than I am about to give it. Still, with several folks bringing up Ron Paul’s odd paleolibertarian positions I thought a few notes on this might be useful
1) As far as I can tell no one but the religious right gives this issue the significance that it deserves. It is a big deal any way we slice it. The ability to create new human beings/ new persons is the most powerful that we have. How we use it is of vital moral and practical importance.
2) The distinction between a human and a person is perhaps the most important question of the coming century. While today one could reasonably argue that almost all persons on earth are biological humans, such a suggestion will soon be ridiculous. How we treat persons vs. how we treat humans will matter a lot for how society is structured.
3) The only place in the current world where we get to really think this through in a practical way is with the process of human development. Most people readily concede that human haploids – sperm and eggs – are not persons (though I think it is silly to deny that they are humans). Most people readily concede that the overwhelming majority of adult diploid human beings are persons.
Somewhere along the line then personification must take place. How that happens is crucial to our understanding what we mean by person.
4) Do we really think that there are human rights? Rights that extend to all humans regardless of personhood and no non-human persons. How can this be anything but species prejudice?
5) Don’t all of our Kantian moral judgments depend on personhood, not humanness.
6) Is there any reason at all why utilitarian moral judgments should be confined to humans. Here its not even clear if personhood is the right characteristic or if it is merely the ability to experience suffering or joy.
7) We don’t actually behave as if babies have any rights at all. Perhaps, the right to life but even that is questionable. A list of baby’s rights that are violated without a second thought:
a) Liberty
b) Contract
c) Property
d) Freedom of Expression
e) Pursuit of Happiness / Self-determination
f) Blood and body
g) To be governed by mutual consent
And, given that babies are not allowed to refuse medical treatment its hard to say under what reasoning they are granted a right to life? A duty to life is imposed upon them, but even if the baby expressed a desire to allow natural processes to precipitate his or her death, that desire would be refused without a second thought.
If a baby can’t even allow nature to takes course on the baby’s own terms then in what sense does the baby have a “right.” None of its preferences or beliefs have to be respected by law.
It can be force fed. It can be forced medicine. It can have its blood taken against its will. It can be forcibly examined, prodded and even have instruments inserted into it. Its body can be cut open and operated on if the parents or state deem it in the baby’s best interest.
This individual has nothing that could be called a civil right in our society.
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Monday ~ September 5th, 2011 at 2:19 pm
White Rabbit
You’ve exposed one of the most fundamental libertarian inconsistencies as well: that a baby is in essence a slave to its parents.
If slavery and extortion is allowed within a family then why not allow similar power for an even larger group of democratically elected people: a democratic government?
Libertarians generally won’t be able to give a honest, rational, self-consistent answer to that question – the best you’ll get is some semi-religious claim about faith in the divine goodness of family members.
Monday ~ September 5th, 2011 at 5:10 pm
JazzBumpa
Most people readily concede that human haploids – sperm and eggs – are not persons (though I think it is silly to deny that they are humans).
They are no more “human” than an individual blood cell, or the epidermal cells you shed by the millions. Your thinking here is profoundly muddled.
Cheers!
JzB
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
TeslaNick
@JazzBumpa: There’s a case to be made that an individual cell is human in some sense of the word. Is an arm human? How about two? How about a disorganized set of human parts? How about a fully in-tact human being? The difference is in degree, not in kind.
I think the larger point is that there’s a difference between a human and a person. A dead body is human, but not a person. At some point a developing zygote/fetus/whatever (which is unambiguously human) crosses the threshold into person-dom. Where that line is, and what that actually means is what should be up for debate.
The complaint that I have with this sort of argument is that it requires one adopt the flawed idea that there are special metaphysics surrounding people–that they have inalienable rights that they might be deprived of. There’s no evidence of this, just as there’s no evidence of inalienable rights of chickens. We choose to enumerate certain rights and aspirations that all people should be permitted to have, because they are both individually desirable and tend to produce positive cultural and economic effects.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Rob Cafaro
According to this trail of logic, what do you say of those with stunted human development, say the mentally and physically disabled? Or even those older than infants, that still are not necessarily granted the rights mentioned above. At that point, not until one is “fully capable” at operating at some so-called “human potential” both contributarily to society and in “human” function does one deserve human rights? I’m not so sure I follow this logic, or the path it leads to.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
makeseriously
All of the above are also true of invalids and those in a coma. Using your dichotomy, does that state of being reduce the person to merely human? If personhood is defined by the ability to manage human rights, then is any person who cannot fulfill the list less of a person?
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 5:11 pm
Sick
A fetus has his entire body “birth’ed” except his head. A physician, who took the Hypocritic oath, then proceeds to suck its brain out and crush its skull, because it is not yet “born”. Partial birth abortion is legal in USA.
We live in an evil and sick world.
Wednesday ~ September 7th, 2011 at 12:05 pm
Benny Lava
No it isn’t. It was made illegal in 2003 and in 2007 the Supreme Court affirmed the illegality of the procedure.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 5:52 pm
Johnnie Linn
Let’s be careful in defining what a right is. A right is one of eight legal concepts identified by Hohfeld. These concepts can be arranged in pairs: right/duty, liberty/no-right, immunity/disablity, power/liability.
A right is a claim by one person upon another. The person upon whom the claim is made has the corresponding duty. I think that it can be argued easily that a baby has a claim on its parents. This claim is a right.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 7:48 pm
teageegeepea
The baby never gains rights because there are none by virtue of being human. So I concluded that post-birth abortion is a-ok. It starts becoming problematic when it has grown competent enough to make deals (as Robin Hanson would put it) or kick ass.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 8:01 pm
JR92130
Maybe as a biologist I have a different take.
“2) The distinction between a human and a person is perhaps the most important question of the coming century. ”
Doubt it. I’m more interested in the distinction between a human and a non-human. Like a mouse engineered to have a human immune system. That’s a mouse.
But what if you knock in some human neural genes? How close to a human can you get starting with something we biologists tinker with every day? The human/person developmental dichotomy will always be there. Viability? Heart beat? Who knows–this is the realm of philosophy and it’s unchanging.
But we biologists are gaining the tools to systematically create new organisms, some that the public-at-large would not be very comfortable with.
Tuesday ~ September 6th, 2011 at 11:25 pm
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Thursday ~ October 27th, 2011 at 4:41 am
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