From: kauff@neit.cgd.ucar.edu (Brian Kauffman)
Subject: Re: Pro-Choice Criteria for Personhood
Organization: NCAR, Boulder CO
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 01:05:04 GMT

> = mcdonald@kestrel.edu (Jim McDonald) writes:
>|> = frank@D012S658.uucp (Frank O'Dwyer) writes:
>|>> = bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig) writes:
>|> >> = sfm@manduca.neurobio.arizona.edu (Stephen Matheson) writes:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
>|> >>Yeah.  But I guess the point is that it's not so obvious that the
>|> >>brain is the seat of personhood, much less "consciousness" and other
>|> >>fluffy stuff.
>|> >
>|> >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.  It is similar to an adult human person in that it is human,
>|> has twohuman parents, and that it was conceived.  ...

>I'm genuinely puzzled by the belief systems of people who say they think a
>zygote is a person, given the existance of people who are chimeras (i.e., are
>derived from two or more zygotes that fused).  Maybe you could help me 
>understand.  (You are an expert on your own beliefs, after all!)
>
>Since you believe a zygote is a person, could you please satisfy my curiosity 
>about your beliefs in the following situations?  For what it's worth, these
>are not all hypothetical situations--some are well documented, and all are 
>plausible.  (I would personally guess that all have happened, but it's rather
>rare that genetic tests are performed that provide definitive documentation--
>usually this only happens when a person has noticeable medical problems as
>a result of being a chimera.)
>
> o When a zygote fuses with another zygote, do you think that two people 
>    literally become one?  (If you believe people have souls, did two souls
>    become one?)

While most people would consider an infant a "person", and
many might consider a late term fetus a "person", calling a zygote a
"person", IMO, bends the term "person" well past the breaking point.

So what's the point of this semantic wrangling anyway:
Morally, I think it is very intuitive to want to treat "similar beings" 
in a uniform way, (eg, equal rights for men vs women).  But as is pointed 
out in the above post, zygotes are so RADICALLY DIFFERENT,
physically & mentally, from what I (and possibly most people) have in mind 
when I think of "people", (eg: no brain, no consciousness, the ability to 
fuse/divide, etc) that there doesn't seem to be any INTUITIVE reason why 
they should be treated the same as the persons I see every day.  Whatever 
rights a fetus deserves don't follow directly from intuitive rules like 
"all people should be treated equally".

I guess calling zygotes "people" is a way to (semantically) equate them with 
what is more commonly known as people, which in a round-about way might 
suggest that morally we should treat them the same as, say infants.
But simply defining them as "persons" is merely semantic slight-of-hand.
We're all free to create our own personal languages in which "person" can 
be defined to mean literally *anything*, but then when you say something 
like "killing 'people' is wrong", the average guy on the street might be 
seriously misled about what you're really saying.

The bottom line: zygotes are so unlike 'persons' that the moral rules that
apply to zygotes can't be intuitively inferred from the rules that apply
to 'people'.

-Brian