From: frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer)
Newsgroups: talk.abortion
Subject: Re: Pro-Choice Criteria for Personhood
Date: 16 Nov 1992 17:15:39 GMT
Organization: Siemens-Nixdorf AG
NNTP-Posting-Host: d012s658.ap.mchp.sni.de

In article <BxqDEM.KAJ@news.cso.uiuc.edu> parker@ehsn21.cen.uiuc.edu (Robert S. Parker) writes:
>frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>
>>In article <1992Nov6.145325.24639@netcom.com> bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig) writes:
>>>Try the argument from the other direction, then: does there exist
>>>anything which you would call a "person" but which lacks a brain?  If
>>>so, then how is this thing similar to an adult human person?
>
>>Sure there is.  A zygote or early embryo lacks a brain, and I would call it a
>>person.
>
>I wouldn't.  Human yes, a person, no.

Who asked you? :-)

>>         It is similar to an adult human person in that it is human, has two
>>human parents, and that it was conceived.  It is also similar in that it
>>appears at the same point, or better, on the evolutionary scale.  Another
>>similarity to an adult human is that given a fair chance, it will one day
>>be free.
>
>But it is not sentient.  An embryo has no consciousness.

Proof?  Prove that you are sentient while you're at it.

>Also, every one of your "similarities" is trivial.

Right.  Humanity is trivial.  Parenthood is trivial.  Conception is trivial.
Evolution is trivial.  Freedom is trivial.  Try any one of these things
at home, and see why I disagree.

>>>human brain.  Can you think of anything which lacks any sort of brain,
>>>organic or cybernetic or electronic or what-have-you, yet still
>>>appears to have consciousness?
>
>>A soul.
>
>You are assuming that souls exist (outside the philosophical abstraction) and

You are assuming they don't.  Why is this better?  I'm not assuming anything.
I'm admitting that I don't know.

>that they are conscious and that they do not themselves have anything that
>is "like a brain".  I find the first two highly suspect and consider the third
>to contradict the second.

Have you pursued the question of whether a brain has anything that is "like a
soul"?   That idea contradicts nothing. 

What I find to be highly suspect is the idea of arbitrarily cutting a
dividing line across humanity on the basis of some half-understood notion of
sentience, when there is an alternative point of personhood available that,
on the face of it, is a quantum leap away from being one individual and
towards being another - this is the point of conception.  A legal definition
of personhood placed at birth is fine - and no matter where you place the
point of personhood a woman should be entitled to obtain an abortion anyway -
but to portray this or any other opinion of personhood as fact is offensive.

>Remind me to post the story of the two people who were stranded on a paradise
>garden island sometime.

Remind me to post the story of the zygote they called Darwin sometime.

>-Rob

-- 
Frank.ODwyer@ap.mchp.sni.de   "You take slaves when you make us free,
                               when you make us free your way"
                             World Party - 'Ain't going to come til I'm ready'
                   
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