Humanity Amendment
Posted on 19 October 2011
You maybe will not see this in the mainstream news, but at least one state in our union is preparing to overturn Roe v Wade in a fashion which, if I read the opinion correctly, leaves no legal room to reimpose it.
I cannot restrain my joy. This is the first time since I have started following politics when it seems as if Conservative principles and the Culture of Life have a strong wind of public opinion in their sails. A generation born and raised with the prenatal genocide called Abortion as a part of their background, and bombarded without ceasing from a tender age with propaganda both subtle and blatant to made the abomination seem normal and mainstream — for some reason, even among the young, the grisly and paramount Eucharist of the death cult of Moloch called abortion is losing support.
Amendment 26 – The Mississippi Personhood Amendment– is a citizens initiative to amend the Mississippi Constitution to define personhood as beginning at fertilization. Its purpose is to protect all life, including the life of the unborn. http://personhoodmississippi.com/amendment-26/what-it-says.aspx
Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.
Risibly and predictably, the hysteria on Left-leaning blogs is beginning, making the claim that this amendment would outlaw contraception and would lead to jail time for women who suffer natural miscarriages. Ri-iii-ight.
Speaking as an attorney and a scholar of the law, let me explain this in layman’s terms: shut your pie-eating holes, you lying jackass buggers.
Wise and useful to the republic, and as pleasing alike to maidens and angels as revoking the legalization of contraceptives would be, there is no wording the proposed amendment which could possibly have that legal effect. None. Not even if a court were as creative as the kangaroos of Roe v Wade who created out of thin air and penumbras and emanations and smoke and mirrors a right to prenatal infanticide that overturns all legislative interest in the area.
So why bring up the prospect that declaring human offspring to be human will lead to the banning of contraception and the end of the world? If decreeing by law life to begin at conception is an unwise public policy, let us debate the point on the merits. Why bring up contraception at all? Unless, of course, you know you cannot win the debate about when life begins on the merits.
That is one possibility. The other is that the Left are illogical, and determine what policy to support not by logical relation of one idea to another, but by the emotional association of idea with idea.
Let me use an example. A conservative might reason that a nation cannot decrease its national debts solely by borrowing, on that grounds that borrowing incurs rather than alleviates debt: for this is the logical relation of the idea of debt to borrowing, A is A, or the law of identity.
On the other hand, a Leftist, perhaps because he heard a folk song in his youth, or saw a striking image, or conceives a deep hatred for his father, has formed an arbitrary and emotional association between an imaginary picture of Rich Uncle Pennybags from the Monopoly game, and the idea that working one’s way out of debt tramples the faces of Tiny Tim Cratchett and Oliver Twist, and other poor people the Leftist knows only through books and films. So he will support the idea of decreasing the national debt solely by means of borrowing, and if you question him on the soundness of the policy, he will call you a racist Homophobic Islamophobe, since (in his mind) opposition to his policy is emotionally associated with images of mental disease also taken from Victorian Age pictures of Bedlam, or a comic book or horror film he saw as a child.
The third possibility, and not mutually exclusive with the first two, is that Lefties are liars. Their entire legal and moral philosophy is based on neurotic self-deception, which, unfortunately, they cannot maintain without the active cooperation of a public willing to play along, and help them falsify reality, and put on the play-pretend show.
The guild of innocent blood on their hands, the mother’s own child’s blood, the blood of a child slain by his very mother merely for her own selfish convenience–that is a guilt not to be soothed away.
And so the guilt must be covered over in the screaming distraction of some other issue, or called women’s rights or liberties or some other noble name. The gnawing worm in the heart that knows abortion is infanticide must be silenced by the magic of Orwellian double-think, or merely shouted down.
When they shout and sob and sneer, Leftist are not arguing with you, dear reader. They are arguing with little tiny pale ghosts they only see in their minds, the countless infants slain, who stare at them accusingly with uncanny and empty eyes that never saw the light of day. If their argument takes on a tone of hysteria, this may be why.
That is the optimistic assumption, of course.
The pessimistic assumption is that the Leftists actually believe their acrid and deathly rhetoric, and look upon their fellow human beings with eyes so cold and reptilian that they actually regard their fellow human beings as hairless apes or lifeless biochemical machines, and therefore their conscience does not trouble them because they have no more pity than a death camp guard for some untermenschen about to be gassed and rendered into soap. The babies are, to them, simply Jews or Negroes or some other subhuman subspecies so low on the rung of evolution as to not deserve the pity one would spare a dying dog.
Of course, if they don’t regard wee helpless babies in the womb as human, what does that say about how the regard you?
The social engineers are not exactly brimming with respect for the working cogs in the great social machine they seek to fix. The don’t believe in Original Sin as the source of the world’s ills; in a way, they do not believe in ills at all, or, rather, they believe every evil, war or crime, is a mechanical malfunction in the mechanism by which crass material goods are distributed, and that tinkering with human lives as if humans were cogs and gearboxes will make the world-machine cough and sputter and roar to life, and then a miracle occurs, the laws of economics are suspended, and then the golden-walled city of Utopia will float down from the clouds, adorned as a bride for her wedding, and meatpies fly through the air, and popcorn fall as snow, and grog gush from streams and fountains, and all things forevermore be free to all.
The idea that man might suffer a sin like pride or envy or hate or be bent toward evils not to be sated by meat pie and stoup of grog is too gigantically obvious a thought to touch upon their imaginations. What must they think of you, O cattle, if they think to be fattened is all your desire, and hunger your only discontent?
Maybe this Humanity Amendment will bring to their minds the first part of the reality they are so hellbent upon ignoring, that men are men, and not apes and not machines. Since reality does not seem real, maybe abstract legal wording will seem real.
If it works, we can pass other laws to inform the intellectual elite that water will wet you, or fire burn.
The potential issue is that the amendment covers babies before they can properly be said to be in the womb, and the amendment is clearly designed with this in mind.
The claim that this could illegalize contraceptives is that many contraceptives do not prevent fertilization but implantation. Since by law the fertilized egg is now a person then would preventing implantation be the same a murder? And if this is the case with artificial contraceptives then if the mother unknowingly causes a miscarriage is she guilty of manslaughter? What of the numerous fertilizations that occur but never implant without any actions on the part of the mother?
If you look at the site that is promoting the amendment they link to this site: http://personhoodmsbioethics.wordpress.com/ which clearly states that:
“if decreeing by law life to begin at conception ”
They are decreeing by law that life begins at fertilization which as noted here is not necessarily semantically or medically conception, which may mean implantation. The AMA defines an established pregnancy as beginning at implantation and is the point at which contraceptives must stop being effective if they are not to be considered abortifacient. Defining it to be at fertilization would thus drastically change what is considered a contraceptive (against conception) and what is considered abortifacient, as well as bringing up all the other potential issues, many of which would be avoided by defining a human as beginning at conception, as in implantation, or 14 days after fertilization, whichever comes first.
“The claim that this could illegalize contraceptives is that many contraceptives do not prevent fertilization but implantation.”
Ah. Being a good Catholic, I am unaware of these technical details. I humble stand corrected and retract my comment! Aborticides that are called contraceptives, of the type you describe here, they would also be re-illegalized under this Humanity Amendment.
Then is strenuous physical exercise, alcohol, certain seasonings, certain over the counter medications for other conditions, etc. to also be made illegal as they can prevent implantation or cause a miscarriage before knowledge of pregnancy is established?
I realize that the difference on the issue is theological in nature. It would seem to me that the best chance to get through the Supreme Court would be to take the terminology and definitions that are supported by the medical community. (Unless it is thought that the majority of the Supreme Court that is Catholic will decide the case on the basis of their faith.) There also needs to be clearly laid out bounds that allow for continued medical care of the mother.
From the Mississippi Medical Association:
Prudent legal nuances aside, isn’t limiting practices that “physicians have used for years” kind of the point? That there are certain procedures which even saving a life cannot justify?
It would be unthinkable to excuse the removal of both kidneys from a healthy donor on the grounds that transplants have been performed for years, or to reserve the right to conscript a heart or pancreas on the grounds that doctors must have their options.
But I guess laws that get passed sometimes achieve what they intend, and we can’t have that.
They aren’t talking about abortion but life-saving measures for women suffering ectopic or tubal pregnancies. If such things are considered abortion, which every such things seems to be for some, then I guess that really is the point, but it also seems to miss the entire point of being pro-life in the first place.
Those are not abortions. Abortion is an act that has the termination of a pregnancy via the destruction of the unborn child as its intended and direct end. Ectopic and tubal operations do not have the termination of the unborn child as its intended and direct end. In this case, it is to save the mother’s life.
Not that I disagree with you gentlemen about what is not abortion, but I was a little incredulous because apologists for abortion often paint with lines too broad to make such distinctions, precisely because they want to preserve the illusion of moral equivalence between a salpingectomy to honestly save the life of the mother and a D&E for the convenience of the mother, or at least for her boyfriend. I’m not tilting at straw men; that argument does get made, and it’s easier to swallow if one thinks it’s inseparable from reasonable ones.
Although it could be a good object lesson in the principle of double effect. To go with John’s argument at 9:08, we already distinguish between vehicular manslaughter and murder that happens to be done with a vehicle; as we do between execution by the state and triage by a paramedic.
The doctors are uncertain enough to not support the amendment and the amendment sponsors also are not sure per their own website promoting the amendment. Therefore I don’t see how, absent some case history somewhere in the English speaking world where zygotes were given the exact same rights as a child, anyone can say if such things will be illegal or not.
This is true in Catholic moral philosophy but is not true in law.
In law, intentionally doing an act that you know will result in the death of a specific person is usually murder, regardless of whether or not you specifically intended the death of that person.
In fact, its murder even if I weren’t sure that you would die as a result, but I knew the probability was high.
“Then is strenuous physical exercise, alcohol, certain seasonings, certain over the counter medications for other conditions, etc. to also be made illegal as they can prevent implantation or cause a miscarriage before knowledge of pregnancy is established?”
Quote for me a case where a court, in the days before Roe v Wade, made a ruling like this?
If you cannot quote the case, you have no evidence that this is the way any Anglo-American court would interpret the wording of the proposed Amendment.
The logic of your argument is as if we were to doubt the wisdom of making homicide illegal on the grounds that since people sometimes die in automobile accidents, we fear a court would outlaw automobiles, therefore to preserve our privileges as motorists, homicide should be legal.
I am not aware of anywhere or anywhen that has personhood defined as beginning at the fertilization of an egg, therefore I can not, and the supports of the amendment agree, determine what the effects of the amendment will be outside of the narrow range of abortion. Even in such things as problematic pregnancies, which the medical organizations in Mississippi agree might have the procedures to resolve such to be deemed illegal. If personhood had been granted zygotes previously then please share that information with me and with the Mississippi Medical Association.
I do not doubt the wisdom of making abortion illegal but I do doubt the wisdom of declaring fertilized eggs to be persons before they are actually in the womb and growing. I do not know how the courts would rule on the issues and certainly think wording to make sure such things are not deemed illegal needs to be included in any such amendment.
I don’t believe pre-Roe common law or statutory law ever held that the child was legally a person from the moment of conception.
“Then is strenuous physical exercise, alcohol, certain seasonings, certain over the counter medications for other conditions, etc. to also be made illegal as they can prevent implantation or cause a miscarriage before knowledge of pregnancy is established?”
If you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt in court (big if, there) that these activities were engaged in for the sole and intentional purpose of preventing implantation or causing a miscarriage, why not? To reverse the example used elsewhere, the legality of cars doesn’t mean you can’t charge someone with murder if he deliberately drives into someone.
Technically this might be prosecutable as no more than conspiracy to commit murder, or possibly reckless negligence, as by definition it would have to be done at a time when the person in question could not know if a viable embryo had in fact been fertilized or implanted. But to engage in an otherwise legal action with criminal intent is still a crime, even if no criminal consequences do in fact ensue.
If activity A is intended for end X but unintentionally has the side effect Y, A is not contra-indicated solely because Y is an evil.
As an act of moral reasoning, certainly. But Anglo-American jurisprudence calls murder acts that kill someone and were known to be deadly to the actor, even if the death wasn’t his intent. There very well could be a necessity defense, but the contours of this aren’t clearly established in most jurisdictions because there hitherto hasn’t been much of a need.
Wouldn’t the Federal constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court (rightly or wrongly; in the case of Roe vs Wade, I think wrongly, but that’s not relevant to the point here) take precedence over a State constitution?
Agreed. This amendment is a gesture, nothing more.
Yes, They are trying to create a court case that will go up to the Supreme Court and force a change in Roe vs Wade. That is, in Roe V Wade the question of personhood was brought up and declared that if it was decided that the unborn are people then they are protected by the 14th amendment, making abortion illegal. So the purpose of the amendment is to force the court to readdress the issue, which they put off as it is congresses place to resolve the question, and decide when the unborn should be counted as people.
Ah, I see. Curious that the various congresses haven’t tried this maneuver before, then; maybe it couldn’t have been passed at the federal level, but surely there are a lot of conservative states that could easily have got a definition of personhood through their state legislature? In fact it seems to me that if all that’s needed is a legal definition of personhood, then in effect the Supreme Court was leaving the regulation of abortion to the states; and I had the impression that this is precisely the situation that Roe vs Wade ended.
I’m also not clear on why this is being done as an amendment to the state constitution rather than just an ordinary law. If the amendment would contradict the Supreme Court ruling, then it’ll be thrown out anyway; if it doesn’t, they seem to be putting un-needed obstacles in their own way, since presumably a constitutional amendment is more difficult than passing a law. There seem to be some tactics here that are escaping me.
It hasn’t been done before because most pro-life groups are scared of the Supreme Court changing the rationale for abortion and overturning all restrictions that are on abortions both nationally and at the state level.
I recognize the intent, but if the Supreme Court overrules Roe, it will do so directly. The same justices that would vote to uphold Roe will simply address this amendment by saying that the uncertainty about the personhood of the child is constitution-level uncertainty that the states can’t resolve via statute.
Ergo, the statute, which would have the effect of infringing the abortion right identified in Roe, will be illegal.
Like I said, its a gesture, and a more than commonly silly one.
Except that the claim in Roe vs. Wade was not that the Constitution positively defined humanity as being born — it was that since humanity was not defined, it could not be used to stop abortion.
What about Article VI, Clause 2? And might not even even Amendment XIV, Section 1, Clause 2 apply?
Amendment XIV Section 1 applies to persons born or naturalized, and so could be seen as not applying to the unborn who have not been permanent residents long enough to be naturalized, nor have they yet been born.
On the other hand, one might counter-argue that there had not at the time of framing been a serious need to establish the personhood of persons not yet born, thus we should reinterpret in order to apply the rights of that clause to the unborn in a manner vaguely analogous to how the Air Force is generally taken to be constitutionally provided for despite that only army and naval forces were specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
I am not in any means a lawyer, though, so this is way over my head.
When the 14th is held to apply to the unborn, it will be because the country has already broadly accepted that the unborn are persons.
Using the 14th amendment to win the abortion fight is putting the cart before the horse.
I would like to point out that no one to date knows for sure when a woman ovulates when on the pill as opposed to when she doesn’t. While it is true the Pill causes abortions by denying a newly conceived human the ability to implant, it is near impossible to determine when this has occured in any woman at any given time. It would be very difficult to get it banned on those grounds even with such an amendment in a state constitution.
The Pill is doing a world of enviornmental harm by the flood of artificial estrogens into the water table, and likely increasing breast cancer and cervical cancer in women, as well as rendering them infertile (advanced-aging the cervix by drying it out) and sometimes permanently without a sex drive (and maybe even making men drinking that hyper-estregenated water more girly,) so banning it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing anyway. Although you’d have a difficult time doing it, because it, too, has become a sacrament to much of the culture even more so than abortion has.
But under this law it is murder, or abortion. Therefore not only the pill but alcohol and a wide range of other substances and practices should be illegal so as to prevent this murder. If you are going to take the position that life begins at the moment of fertilization then be completely consistent in doing so and actually think about the potential implications, including in relation to things like ectopic pregnancies.
As for any environmental impacts of the pill that is another question entirely. There are contraceptives that do not use estrogen, for instance.
I am not pro-abortion, but very much pro-life, just the understanding of what constitutes life is different for primarily theological reasons, which again would be a different discussion.
Considering I believe, and practiced, complete abstinence before marriage and complete fidelity in marriage I can’t say anything about the “sacrament” of contraceptives. I do however believe that there are a variety of possible reasons that a husband and wife may decide to use contraceptives within a marriage that are legitimate in nature but that this is between the husband and wife and God, who they should go to in prayer about the subject. I am also fine with the morning after pill being given to rape victims, if the rape victim so desires. I am even fine with declaring that after proper implantation a fetus is a person and has the rights of such.
Darn. I thought I hit reply to John Hutchins first post.
But Shana, seeing as it’s not possible to know when it might murder, and it’s very purpose is to murder, wouldn’t anyone using it be at risk of murder charges, and therefore subject to a de facto ban? In the same way stabbing a person is: knives are not banned, and can even be found in any kitchen, but as you kill someone with it, you’ve got questions to answer.
Very interesting essay by Mr. Wright on the proposed Mississippi Constitutional Amendemnt. I too hope it gets adopted by that state. Even if it does nothing but force the US Supreme Cort to readdress Roe vs. Wade, that alone would be a victory for the pro life movement.
And I agree with Mr. Wrigt’s second, pessimistic view of how the Left regards human beings. We are merely apes and animals to be treated as such when “necessary.”
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
It’s very hard to find a proposal so crazy that *no one* supports it. Every straw man is unfair to its target, but even the wildest straw man is almost certainly a fair portrayal of *someone’s* views. The universal straw man, the straw man that portrays *no one’s* views accurately, is an extremely rare thing.
So I almost admire your audacity when you present just such a rare thing here:
You portray this as a typical leftist view. But I won’t ask you to prove that. That would be beyond impossible. I place an infinitely lighter burden of proof on you.
I say that you cannot find even a *single, solitary* leftist who supports the idea of decreasing the national debt *solely* by means of borrowing. You may troll the most extreme leftist blog’s comment threads down to their murkiest depths, and you will not find a single advocate for that position.
Such a leftist would be one who doesn’t advocate decreasing the debt by increasing taxes on the wealthy. I challenge you to find even a single one.
I see Tyrrell McAllister completely missed Mr. Wright’s point about “decreasing the national debt by borrowing.” Mr. Wright was being SARCASTIC or IRONIC when he said that. I would HOPE even a liberal would understand you CANNOT lessen national debt by borrowing more. This only goes to how irony and humor flies over the heads of many left wingers.
Sean M. Brooks
Sarcasm does not imply that something is untruthful and while Mr. Wright might believe his point that a “leftist” believes debt can be decreased by borrowing is in itself ironic, it does not mean that Mr. Wright actually believes that “leftists” believe this while Mr. McAllister does not. Thus his ungracious post.
Why would you choose to respond in kind? What possible good could come of is a post that implies that the person you are addressing is stupid?
Except I actually do believe Leftists believe that borrowing is a wise policy to decrease debt and create prosperity.
I took the time to go through Keynes’ GENERAL THEORY, which, like Jame Joyces’ ULYSSES, is deliberately written to obscure rather than explain its meaning
His message, hidden under doubletalk and jabberwocky, is to use manipulation of the currency to expropriate the value of the currency from one person and give it to another, and, during times of recession, to spend wealth before it is earned, which, no matter what name it is called, is borrowing, and has the economic effect of borrowing (drives up the interest rate, and creates malinvestment which creates a bust, inflation, unemployment, etc.)
(Keynes also proposes deflationary policies during times of boom, but for obvious reasons this is never done, and need not enter into this discussion.)
I would not inflict on my worst enemy the chore of leafing through this mass of turgid nonsense, make all the more painful by the fact that the subject matter, although technical, can be explained with dazzling clarity if done in a step by step and logical fashion, defining one’s terms, identifying assumptions as assumptions, and doing the other things all students of scholarly subjects and all scholars once did and took pride in doing. (Once, before the revolution in thought call Modernism and Postmodernism.)
Keynes inability or unwillingness to approach the topic rigorously, in my mind, is sufficient to raise a prima face case of malfeasance. He is, in other words, a fraud, an poseur, and intellectual rather than an actual scholar.
How, then did he get to be so famous? Simple: he flattered the right people, shared and confirmed their world view. He granted the rich and powerful an excuse of immense power to obtain and exercise more power and more. Once the opium addict is addicted, he will recite whatever excuses or justifications, even those he knows to be false, to cover the shame of the addiction: this is as true in politics as it is in opium dens.
The fact that I am running into any disagreement at all surprises me.
I thought the Left admitted, nay, boasted that this was their economic policy. What else was all the debate about when it came to the “bailouts”? You know that was all borrowed money, right?
And the national debt in the trillions — all borrowed. And the “stimulus” funds.
The word stimulus means putting money into a field or product that otherwise will fail or go bankrupt, in hope that the additional ready funds (of borrowed money) will enable them to stay in business, without changing their products or practices or yielding customers to their more efficient competition, until the magic money fairy grants them more money: and then they pay the money back.
Of course, if it actually were wise borrowing, an investment with a fair promise of return, they would borrow from a bank, or some other institution who assess the risk and reward realistically, not as a rhetoric in political theater.
I am not being sarcastic or ironic when I say I thought all of those who support Keynesian economic models knew what the model proposed, even if they cannot cite Keynes chapter and verse. I thought they got the basics of the idea.
The Keynesian model proposes borrowing our way to prosperity. What else was all that political debate about? What did you think objection of the Right was to the bailouts and the stimulus spending? They we were just blue meanies who wanted to create poverty because Satan commands it? (I suspect that is what the Left thinks motivates the Right, but no one has ever come out and said so to me, so this is a suspicion only, not a theory.)
The reason that I will never be an author is that I can’t write.
My point was that Mr. Brooks and Mr. McAllister had both interpreted your post differently. Mr. Brooks took your post as being sarcastic and ironic, and therefore hyperbolic (though neither sarcasm nor irony necessarily indicate hyperbole) so when Mr. McAllister challenged your assertion in a less than gracious way Mr. Brooks effectively called him stupid for failing to recognize humerous hyperbole.
Though I didn’t believe that you were being hyperbolic as I’ve been reading your posts for several years and found them consistent with others criticisms of leftists that you’ve leveled that wasn’t why I responded. Whether you were being hyperbolic or not if someone asks a question of or challenges something you’ve written I don’t believe that they should be responded to with scorn as I don’t see what possible good would come of it.
Unless the goal is to create an echo chamber (which I suspect it is not) then dissenting viewpoints should be welcome as they help sharpen thinking as well as help clarify a point. Beyond the seemingly simple idea of treating others with dignity, when people are treated with scorn not only does it lower the level of discourse it removes any possibility that anyone will change their mind — while unusual in the heat of an exchange of ideas, is not so unusual once the idea has been planted and has time to grow — and recognize the truth of what others have to say.
No matter whom you originally meant this correction to reach, I think I will adopt it for myself, and try to be less scornful when tempted. (Sigh) Sometimes I wish I had great and dramatic sins, not annoying little ones, and the same ones over and over and over.
When I was an atheist I greatly exercised my sarcasm, scorn, and general sense of superiority such that it is with great struggle that I contain them today. Sadly I do not always win this contest but each day I again go about the attempt.
Pride of self seems to be the special providence of atheists. Perhaps it is because they think of themselves as freethinkers and enlightened that they can not but look down at the plebeian intellects of anyone who does not agree with them and scoff at these lesser minds who need God as a crutch. Then again it may be that I am simply projecting my old attitudes. I do know that I took a special delight in foundering the faith of those I interacted with and scorn and ridicule were two of my chief weapons. It is easier to blow out a candle than it is to light one.
I will pray that you find your own particular struggles eased.
It is because the atheist, even if at first humble, must eventually notice that all but the most minute fraction of all men of history of all races, ranks, professions and estates disagree with him on a most basic foundational belief.
And yet to the atheist the nonexistence of God is not a complex or confusing question like deciding between Big Bang theory or Steady State theory, with many nuances of technical data to be weighed. To an atheist it is patently obvious, like not believing in unicorns or fairies or Santa Claus or flying spaghetti monsters. The reason why the atheists use these same stupid example over and over again is that they do not seem stupid to them, but perfectly apt.
The atheist mind is not one occupied with doubt, but incredulity. He does not ask, “Why do you believe this strange yet understandable belief?” He asks, “How can you believe such patently bogus nonsense?” and he shakes his head and wonders why he, and he alone, except for a few, very few, fellows like himself, is the only one who can see the obvious.
And so the answer will come to him, soon or late, that the reason. It is simply not obvious to the rest of mankind. They are too stupid to see the obvious, or too stubborn, or too gullible.
And once the flattery of telling oneself that one is wise, and thoughtful, and skeptical, and clear of mind infects one’s mind, no evidence can ever cause one to question it.
Was your experience what you were an atheist similar to mine? I describe my own psychology, of course.
Unless the Christian can impress the atheist with some other accomplishment in some other area, one where the Novocaine of self-flattery has not yet reached the nerve of thought, the atheist can never break free of his self-fulfilling prophecy of endless self-congratulation. For me, it was reading JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and GK Chesterton, men of letters who unambiguously had excelled in my chosen field of storytelling; and reading Saint Thomas Aquinas, a mind of Euclidean rigor and clarity and logic in my chosen field of philosophy.
I wonder whether you thought that my challenge to you was “ungracious”. I did not think so at the time, but I would be grateful to be informed otherwise.
Is this question for me? No, I did not see anything I thought was untoward. I simply assume that, during a debate, asking for clarification is always legitimate, and always must be answered, lest an incentive be created that would discourage debaters from asking for clarifications.
Since nine out of ten argument are based on semantic differences rather than real differences, I regard clarification as crucial, and deliberate attempts to obscure (i.e. political correctness, euphemism, jabberwocky) as reprehensible.
Many arguments could be settled before they begin merely by having both parties agree on each others’ topic sentences, that is, taking the time to understand that they understand what point the other is trying to make.
Hi, Photios,
Exactly how was I being “ungracious”? Did I call Mr. McAllister bad names or attribute strange and weird perversions to him? No, I did not.
I will admit to having felt a wee bit irritated with Mr. McAllister. So,if I was in any way lacking in charity to him, I apologize now to Mr. McAllister.
I think I have a right to SOME anger when I see how fools in both America and Europe are driving great nations to disaster and ruin. And, yes, I include the sainted Barack Obama as one of those fools! (Sarcasm deliberately meant!)
Sean M. Brooks
I don’t know if people have a right to anger or not, but this is well beyond my point. My poorly worded point was that neither you nor Mr. McAllister knew whether or not Mr. Wright was being facetious or serious in his post, and even if either of you did, it was ungracious how Mr. McAllister responded to Mr. Wright and it was ungracious how you responded to Mr. McAllister. A point that should be all the clearer to you now that you realize that it was you who had misinterpreted Mr. Wright’s post, and not Mr. McAllister.
And yes, you scornfully dismissed Mr. McAllister by implying that he was foolish for not recognizing a joke that was in fact not a joke.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that either of us was rude.
Thank you, Mr. McAllister. And I do apologize again, just in case I was “ungracious” to you.
Sean M. Brooks
Perhaps you will join me in asking Mr. Wright to settle which of our divergent readings is correct.
I will interpret the question as a tacit admission that Leftist do actually believe you can borrow your way out of debt.
Is the argument only that I said Leftists SOLELY want to borrow their way out of debt, whereas in reality Leftists want to borrow their way out of debt AND tax the rich?
Since both economic policies are counterproductive of the ends allegedly sought, and, when taken to the extreme of folly we currently see in Europe and America, are suicidal, I see no need to make the distinction. By “solely” here, I meant only that borrowing was not accompanied by austerity measures such as cutting national spending or returning to a gold standard.
I expected someone might object that the borrowing, while in debt, would act as investment on stock, and that the return on investment would alter the balance of income to outlay — which, of course, is not in contemplation. A man in debt might borrow money to start a new business, eventually making enough to pay back both the new and old debt. A junkie in debt who borrows money because he is addicted — whether he is addicted to morphine or to vote-chasing — will not pay back either loan. But since no one (not even conservatives) is expecting the US government to undertake any measure to dismantle the welfare state or return to the legal limits of its action as defined by the Constitution, I felt the need to head off this frivolous counterargument by saying “solely.”
But, no, no one denies that the Left wishes, at all seasons and in all weathers, to raise taxes. The only argument among the left is between the moderates, who seek a 75 to 90 percent income tax rate paid for in currency suffering continual inflation, and the radicals, who seek a 100 percent income tax rate, along with a value added tax, a land tax, a capital gains tax, and inheritance tax, and the abolition of private property altogether.
So, I was not saying the Left do not want to raise taxes. I didn’t think it was necessary to say it. That was just a given.
If you had said, “without cutting national spending or returning to a gold standard,” instead of “solely,” I would not have objected. Thank you for clarifying your meaning.
I admit the objection is fair. The Left think the way out of debt is by going further in debt. And eating the rich. I did not mean my words to be taken to mean the Left changed their mind about eating the rich.
Hi, Mr. McAllister,
And Mr. Wright has explained in great detail that he was not being iroic or sarcastic. That he MEANT what he said. Iow, I was wrong thinking he was being sardonic. I momentarily forgot many liberals actually BELIEVE gov’ts can borrow their way out of debt.
Sean M. Brooks
“I would HOPE even a liberal would understand you CANNOT lessen national debt by borrowing more.”
I do not share that hope.
It is a false hope as one of the driving ideas is that we borrow tons of money now in the expectation that doing so will create growth and create inflation so that the national debt is much lower in real valued terms, in other words, we borrow the money so that we have less debt to pay back in the future.
Dear Mr. Wright,
I said, “I would HOPE evem a ;iberal would understand you CANNOT lessen nation debt by borrowing more.” You replied,”I do not share that hope.”
Silly me! I was thinking of commonplace every day TRUTHS such as the impossibility of paying off trillions in national debt by borrowing more trillions. I forgot many liberals are UNWILLING to accept the brute fact it is IMPOSSIBLE for a nation to forever live beyond its means without someday being forced, one way or another, to stop behaving like that.
A private sector example would be a guy with 60,000 dollars in credit card debt opening new credit card accounts to pay for the old credit card debt. As with nations, it cannot work forever!
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
You can in fact pay off debt by borrowing money. It all depends on what you do with the borrowed money.
In your example, if you use that money to start a successful business then you will eventually pay off the debt. If you use the money to throw a series of parties, then you will find yourself further in debt.
I accept the challenge.
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA.
Well…?
Can you show where Keynes advocated reducing the national debt solely by borrowing? Please observe that the ‘solely’ is your own phrasing.
So if Mr Wright had written instead “…reducing the national debt by borrowing…”, you would have been OK with that?
If he had said “reducing the national debt with a strategy involving many parts, of which temporarily borrowing money is one“, then I would concede that some leftists believe that.
All borrowing is temporary, is it not? Otherwise it is fraud or theft.
does inflation count as fraud and theft?
Dear Mr. Hutchins,
You asked, “does inflation count as fraud and theft?” The short, blunt answer is YES. Desperate politicians, usually left wingers/liberals, find themselves running out of money to pay for all their absurd and grandiose fantasies. So, they debase money to at least temporarily pay for their frauds with “money” worth less and less.
Sean M. Brooks
“does inflation count as fraud and theft?”
The elements of fraud are: (1) A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed— (2) that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that (3) the individual will act upon it to (4) his legal injury.
In the case of an inflated currency, the concealed fact is the diminution of value transferred from creditor to debtor or to the state patron; the deception is that the diminution is deliberate, not caused by some impersonal Keynesian mechanism of the market, nor by the greed of business, but by and only by the tireless printing presses of the state; any creditor who uses the currency rather than gold or barter a fortiori relies on the currency to store value; the injury is the transfer, without the consent of the creditor, of his value or purchasing power to the debtor or to the state patron.
By ‘state patron’ here I mean anyone who receives payment from the state coffers soon after the printing presses have run. The purchasing power of that freshly minted legal tender exists only insofar as the market has not yet had time to react and adjust wages and prices to the new and inflated level. It is a legalized counterfeit.
If there are thirty dollars in Happy Valley because thirty dollars worth of labor was done to grow various apple orchards, and a dollar buys an apple, and Caesar’s printing presses crank out thirty more dollars on Tuesday and these go into the pocket of Banker Brown (who did no labor to grow anything, but is Caesar’s crony), between the time when the presses run and the time on Friday when bidding for apples drives the price up to two dollar per, every apple Brown buys between Tuesday and the market correction on Friday is value stolen by fraud from people overvaluing Brown’s banknote at its face value. On Wednesday he steal a dollar per every apple he buys; if the farmers raise prices to 1.50 on Thursday, Brown is stealing only fifty cents per apple.
Theft is taking the personal property of another with the intent to do an act which will deprive him permanently of the use and enjoyment thereof. In this case, the property is the money value (and I assume no sane man will argue that the physical banknote but not the value thereof belongs to the man who earn it by his labor) and the intent that he should never have returned to him the value once it is transferred.
The reason why inflation is a difficult concept for laymen to grasp is because they may not at first understand how a banknote could have or retain an imponderable and non-physical property like ‘value’ that is both objective and representative, and yet cannot be measured with a microscope. Materialism as a philosophy is insufficient to explain the materialism of economics.
Philosophical materialism is wedded to radical subjectivism on issues of symbols and semiotics: the idea that a banknote is a physical symbol of a real thing of value, such as a good or a service, baffles them.
In sum, inflation is fraud and theft using the precise definitions of those terms, yes.
Hayek was a materialist. From the linked Cato Institute paper:
I don’t think that Hayek’s materialism interfered with his ability to understand the dynamic that you just described.
Point well taken.
By “temporary”, I meant that the borrowed money is supposed to be paid back with unborrowed money. The “universal straw man” version has the Keynesian advocating that we just take out another loan and apply that directly towards paying down the previous debt. Whatever magical thinking they might be guilty of, it’s not that particular magical thinking.
Agreed. His magical thinking is more complex, and involves mythical entities like ‘multipliers’ which will enable the state by its monetary policy to encourage growth in the private sector by having the investment occur BEFORE the amount of currency in circulation needed to drive down the interest rate sufficiently to make the investment cost effective occurs.
However, this very complexity is a defensive mechanism. One has to cut to the essence to make the objection clear and plain.
Essentially it is the same as borrowing in order to get out of debt. It is just that inflation is the means and centralized national banking is the mechanism, to hide the borrowing, so it does not look like borrowing. One could just as easily call it counterfeiting, or writing bum checks, or writing IOU’s you can never pay back, or…
Specific loans are temporary, but in discussions of political economy one can encounter people who advocate continuously rolling over loans without any intent of eventually reducing the total debt to zero; it seems reasonable to refer to this as ‘permanent borrowing’. Perhaps “temporarily increasing the principal” would have been a better phrasing.
I observe that Keynes’s borrowing is only to be undertaken in certain very specific circumstances, namely when there is unused capacity in the economy, so that one genuinely can increase the total output by, in effect, centralised command. If two million men are unemployed while uneaten grain rots in the silos, it does not defy logic to think that one can gain by putting them to work on building roads or dams, if necessary with pick and shovel, in exchange for a daily ration of grain. True, this might not be the absolute best possible use of their labour, but it is presumably better than letting them starve and the grain rot while waiting for the market to eventually find that superior equilibrium. Market adjustments take time. Borrowing money against the expected additional revenue of those roads and dams (plus future decreases in spending, when the economy is again booming) is a free-market equivalent of directly conscripting the men for corvee labour.
Now, admittedly this specific remedy for a specific kind of problem has been distorted into an excuse for spending more money at all times, state of the economy and source of its problems be damned. But that is not the fault of Keynes.
Rolf wrote what I would have.
The idea of “person” was hammered out in the debates over the Trinity during the early Christian era. The term had previously referred to the masks worn by actors and, by extension, to the roles played by the actors. Finally, it has come to mean any character “on the stage of life.”
I. Boethius
The definition given at the dawn of the West was naturæ rationalis individua substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature). cf. Boethius, “De persona et duabus naturis,” c. ii
The terms are understood as:
Substantia — A substance is a hylemorphic union of matter and form. We might say “a being.” “Substance” excludes accidents, which can only exist in a being.
Individua — An individual (indivisum in se) is that which cannot be further subdivided. Boethius uses it as merely synonymous with singularis.
Rationalis naturae — Personhood is predicated only of intellectual beings. Notice that Boethius does not require the substance/being to be a human one; although until we meet the Vulcans or the Houyhnhnms, this will have to mean “human.” Had he intended to include non-rational substances, like dogs or daisies or diamonds, he would have used suppositum. “A person is therefore sometimes defined as suppositum naturae rationalis.”
Boethius, btw, was a sharp cookie and anticipated political polls: http://branemrys.blogspot.com/2011/10/opinion-polls.html?utm_source=BP_recent
II. Aquinas
From this, Aquinas drew out a necessary detail from individua substantia, which he says (STIII, Q. xvi, a. 12, ad 2um)signifies “substantia, completa, per se subsistens, separata ab aliia,” That is:
(a) substantia or “a being” excludes accidents. “White skin” is not a being, but exists in a being. The same applies to “healthy,” “conscious,” etc.
(b) completa means it must form a complete nature; a part or component, like a hand or a fingernail, is not a person.
(c) per se subsistens means the person “exists in himself and for himself.” He is sui juris, “the ultimate possessor of his nature and all its acts.”
(d) separata ab aliis excludes the universals. Alice and Bob are persons, but Alice+Bob is not a person. “Mankind” is not a person. Neither is a corporation, save by a legal fiction.
(e) rationalis naturae excludes all “non-intellectual supposita.”
Chastek
James Chastek gave a more modernly-worded definition.
“A person is an individual human being.”
We can apply this test to the “conceptum.”
1. Does it have being? That is, does it have existence? Is it there? Numbering, weighing, and measuring ought to establish this.
2. Is it human? Slighting the “rational” part, we can establish this by DNA testing.
3. Is it an individual? Again, the DNA should tell us if it is only a part of the mother. And the science of biology should inform us whether in the common course of nature, the “conceptum” will through morphogenesis articulate itself into an adult human being – by its own internal processes. (This is the same as subsistens per se.)
It’s not as though the Mississippi legislature was the first to think of these things. It is that others have, in order to accomplish certain social and political goals, seen fit to tamper with 2000 years of Western thought.
Hope this helps.
I do not think you ought to slight the rational part in deciding what is a human and what isn’t.
What does the adjective ‘hylemorphic’ mean?
1) Slight the rational? Nay. A human just is a rational animal. The error comes from thinking that this is something somehow apart from the animal. Hence, Thomas Aquinas’ comment “My soul is not ‘I’.” That is, there is no little homunculus living in a Cartesian theater just behind the eyeballs. And a person does not cease to be human simply because, being asleep, he is not rational.
2) Hylemorphic comes from ὕλη + μορφή, that is “matter” and “form.” Every physical body is some form of matter. All tangible matter has form. (Every thing is some thing.) And form does not exist outside of matter. (No white without a white thing.) Formless matter, a.k.a. “prime matter” (hyle prote) is the next thing to nothing without being nothing. It was equated by Heisenberg with mass-energy; but mass-energy has form. More recently, the quantum vacuum and the relativistic aether have been noted; sometimes “dark energy.” See here for some comments: http://hylemorphist.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/zero-point-energygroundvacuum-state-vs-real-being-vs-logical-being-vs-nothing/
3) In any case, that was the concept of “person” that was foundational to the West, Western law, and the the Western idea of individual rights.
I’m nitpicking language here, but it seems to me that the phrase “hylemorphic union of matter and form” could be rephrased “matter-and-form-ish union of matter and form”, in which case the adjective is not only obscure, but also redundant. What purpose does it serve in your exposition? And in fact this goes to a more general problem with your posts on these subjects, which is that you have a lot of technical vocabulary that doesn’t actually clarify anything. Indeed I have yet to understand whether you and I actually disagree on the subject of materialism; it seems possible that what you regard as ‘form’, I regard as a property of matter, and we do not have any real disagreement.
Hylemorphism is the simple term. Perhaps I should not have added to it, but so few these days understand even the simplest Greek terms, even those calling themselves ‘humanists.’
If you wish to call it matterform, go ahead. The two cannot be separated in physics, only in logic. They embody the distinction between potency (matter) and act (form), the which distinction was the Battleship Missouri that blew Parmenides and Zeno out of the water by explaining how change (motion) was possible. Part of the problem that Moderns have is that Aristotle (and Plato) were answers to questions we have long forgotten. Modern natural science simply takes change (motion) for granted, as a brute fact, and has forgotten that there were very real problems in grounding the concept.
Matter, like the other three becauses, is an answer to the question “make?”
a) Being
a1. Matter: What is X made of?
a2. Form: What makes it an X?
b) Becoming
b1. Efficient cause: What makes X?
b2. Final cause: What is X made for?
In that sense, the matter is always one level below the entity being considered. The matter of a wall is bricks. The matter of a brick is clay. The matter of clay is aluminium silicate. And so on. Eventually, we get to “prime matter,” which is pure potency. It is as close as you can get to nothing without being actually nothing. It is unachievable by physics. It may well be that the quantum vacuum is very close to being prime matter. The dark matter is another (possibly the same) possibility. Heisenberg suggested mass-energy as the prime matter; but then Heisenberg, like Einstein, belonged to the last generation of humanist-trained scientists.
Matter is the principle of conservation. It is what persists through change.
Form is the principle of change. It is what trans-forms a thing into another thing.
There is a discussion of this here:
Matter http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02002.htm#3
Form http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02002.htm#4
The Greeks invented a pseudo-problem of change, which was pseudo-solved by further inventing the matter/form distinction. The underlying problem was that they had got themselves tangled up in words and “a priori” knowledge which wasn’t in fact anything of the sort; so they made up more words to ‘extract’ themselves from the tangle. It all sounds very impressive, but when you have learned all the jargon you don’t know anything more than you did at the start, when you saw a arrow move, a runner reach the end of the racecourse, and Achilles catch the Tortoise; all you’ve done is produce pretty pictures in your head and an illusion of being learned.
If’n you say so. Musta been a pseudo problem, because all the wise post-moderns agree.
Though what they generally agree on is that they don’t actually understand what Parmenides was about. Having long taken the answers for granted, they have forgotten there were ever questions.
Part of the problem is one of language, English doesn’t use the same structure as Greek therefore some of the questions that make sense in Greek are meaningless in English. Presumably if there is real meaning to the questions and they aren’t just oddities of language then there should be a way to translate it into English so that it can be explained to those not trained in philosophy. Given that Philosophers can’t agree on what is meant by somethings, I am not entirely sure that it isn’t just oddities of Greek that have no real meaning.
The other problem is the idea that change is impossible, as coming into being or movement would, according to Parmenides, require creation out of nothing. This necessitates that the experienced world be an illusion (where did the illusion come from?) and the claim that despite all physical evidence to the contrary change can not happen and everything is one. Considering how moderns value physical evidence over ungrounded logic then they will reject any claim of the world being an illusion and, even if they don’t have as much of a metaphysically complex or complete a theory, work with what things seem to be as if that is how the world really is.
You can deride the lack of metaphysical expertise of moderns but their physical observations have overturned some of the famous ungrounded metaphysical reasoning of how the world is and is not, or at least its illusion is or is not.
You may also want to consider that Parmenides claimed to have been visited by a Goddess who gave him his philosophy, which was in large part adopted by Plato and Aristotle. Given that much of how this illusion of the world works according to him was utterly false then perhaps we should considering distrusting using his ideas as the basis of philosophy and religion.
“You can deride the lack of metaphysical expertise of moderns but their physical observations have overturned some of the famous ungrounded metaphysical reasoning of how the world is and is not, or at least its illusion is or is not. ”
Physical observations cannot, by definition, overturn a metaphysical speculation, grounded or ungrounded. If we are living in ‘The Matrix’ or the illusion of the Buddhist, no careful examination of the illusion, no matter how careful nor through what microscopes, can prove it unreal, because the reality of the evidence itself is in question.
Suppose you saw or seemed to see the same cat go past a door one moment after itself. One could measure at most the consistency: but whether from this one reasons that reality being consistent, inconstancy proves the Matrix is unreal, or if one reasons that whatever one sees or seems to see is real by definition, therefore seeing an inconsistent sight proves reality inconsistent, is a question to be solved by reasoning, not from observation.
Parmenides developed in his work a cosmology by logic from his view of ultimate reality, which includes a lot of ideas that are later found in Aristotle and there treated as physics. These ideas are wrong but they are built off of his metaphysical foundation. The conclusions were way off, shouldn’t we then rightly question the foundation on which they are built and all other conclusions that are draw from that foundation?
If I were to develop a logical system that had, as a result of the axioms, that 2+2=5 and I then tried to use that result in counting sacks of grain while doing a trade then I would get an inconsistent result by counting by twos or counting one at a time. I would then be right in throwing out 2+2=5, but I should also probably throw out the axioms that led to that result because they are inconsistent with experience in reality, even if 2+2=5 were completely internally consistent.
In this, and your next response, you indicate a lack of understanding of what Parmenides, or indeed any of the others so often praised as the “first scientists” were trying to come to grips with. Parmenides did not try to prove that the world was an illusion, nor that 2+2=5. He tried to show that when time is considered as a continuum it leads to a reductio.
Also, Aristotle did not adopt Parmenides’ metaphysics. He rebutted it. (In fact, he had nothing good to say about the dude.)
I understand that just as many people drive automobiles quite well and do many useful things with them without the least grasp of the principles of thermodynamics, many others get by without grasping the metaphysics that underlies the physics.
I have read them and if I have not understood them as you do then I guess that is my fault. He certainly seems to say that the world can not be rightly known by the senses and that the known world is illusion as true reality is unchanging and unmoving.
Parmenides is where the idea that voids can not exist comes from, as well as the start of the ideas of the Philosophers God, as well as many other ideas that were highly influential on Aristotle (such as the ideas on motion). Whether Aristotle had nothing good to say about him is irrelevant to whether his ideas influenced and shaped Aristotle’s.
Once the revolution has happened, the counter-revolution is itself destructive unless it is also statesmanlike. A program of simply and and flatly undoing what has been done will usually be a bad idea.
So, in this instance, if we hadn’t taken the wrongful abortion detour, we’d already have evolved jurisprudence and practices to deal with things like contraception and IVF and ectopic pregnancies. Since we haven’t, prudent lawmakers who are rightly intent on getting back on track will try to take some of those short-circuited developments into account. For instance, you’d pass a personhood law that also clearly made ectopic pregnancy abortions legal.
Hallelujah! Save the poor suffering blastocysts!
Whoa, dude — way to enlist me in the ranks of NARAL.
Seriously, man, if you think this is rational, you really are just one step from
“Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great / If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate.”
Yes, the offspring of human beings are human, on the grounds that an offspring by definition shares the species of its parent — or else it is not an offspring. Is that logic too complex or obscure for you?
Maybe logic is not your strong suit. You don’t think it is odd to make your decisions about matters of grave political and moral import based on lyrics from a comedy, eh? Well, I see you one Monty Python, and I raise you a Doctor Seuss: a person is a person is a person, no matter how small.
Biologically human, but not yet a person.
I’ll grant that it’s grotesque to claim that a baby 24 hours before being born isn’t yet human. But to claim that a lump of cells 24 hours after conception is already “human,” in any meaningful sense, just doesn’t pass the straight-face test, AFAIC.
Let me see: biologically it is a human, correct? He or she has a sex, having either an XX or XY chromosome pair, correct? He is a member of the human species and is the offspring of the parents, correct?
So he is only not-human in a non-biological sense, correct? He does not look like you, so you giggle. Is that your test?
Are you saying the offspring is not human because he does not have a soul?
Suppose I took that lump of cells, and I had the power, by interfering with the gene plasm, to ensure that the child would be born with crippling birth defects? Suppose further that I was the child’s mother, and therefore under a moral duty to keep and protect the child. Would it be morally acceptable, legal, right and just, for me to interfere with the lump of cells so as to give birth to a deformed Quasimodo? Suppose for the sake of argument I have some financial interest or pressing reason to do so, such as I need to sell the child to the gypsies, and they need a hunchbacked retard.
I assume you and I would agree that the mother hiring someone to go reaching into the mother’s womb when the child was days or hours before birth, and crippling and lobotomizing the organism would be a violation of the mother’s duty of care?
If the result by meddling with gene plasm at an earlier stage would be the same, would the fact that the act was committed merely at a different time change the mother’s duty of care?
If not “human,” what? Canine? Petunia? Wait, I know! We can test the DNA! I wonder what it will show us. I can hardly wait.
+ + +
First, be it noted, “person” as we have it was hashed out by the Christians in the long ago. It was not a concept in Rome, China, or elsewhere. Boethius defined person as naturae rationalis individua substantia (an individual substance of a rational nature). “Substance” meant a hylemorphic union (matter+form) and a “nature” meant a substantial form or “essence” (from “esse” to be). A “rational nature” excludes petunias, rocks, and puppies from the ranks of persons.
T. Aquinas glossed individua substantia to signify a) substantia, b) completa, c) per se subsistens, and d) separata ab aliia, i.e., “a substance, complete, subsisting per se, and existing apart from others.”
If to this be added rationalis naturae, we have a definition comprising the five notes that go to make up a person:
(a) substantia excludes those forms called accidents. Thus, sex or skin color does not make a person.
(b) completa means a person forms a complete nature and is not a part of something else. A fingernail or a sperm cell is not a person, but rather a part of a person.
(c) per se subsistens means a person exists in and for himself. He is “the ultimate possessor of his nature and all its acts.” The Late Modern notion of “self-ownership” comes close to this, although there is an important distinction between possession and ownership. An aspect of per se subsistens known to moderns is that in the common course of nature the blastocyst will unfold into an adult human through its own immanent powers. It is not assembled by another like a mousetrap; it grows itself. A sperm cell or a fingernail will not self-assemble by its own nature. Rather, detached from a whole organism (completa), they will simply act like hunks of chemicals.
(d) separata ab aliis excludes the universal (substantia secunda). Adam is a person, “man” is not.
(e) rationalis naturae excludes non-intellective supposita, like rocks, roses, and rabbits.
The key, as we see, is “individual.” So, more briefly put: a person is “an individual human being” and we can empirically test:
i) Being. Does the blastocyst have physical being? Mass, dimension, pH, and all what have you?
ii) Human. That DNA thingie, already mentioned.
iii) Individual. All the things mentioned about being distinct from the mother, a self-assembler, and so forth.
Mess with these definitions to the peril of Western Civ.
“blastocyst will unfold into an adult human through its own immanent powers”
If and only if it attaches successfully and properly to the mothers womb and does not contain significant genetic defects that will cause it to self destruct.
“rationalis naturae excludes non-intellective supposita”
Three problems I see with this, zygotes don’t have any current intellective properties when they are a zygote. They may have the potential to have intellective properties, but that is not a given. Second, the brain dead likewise do not have intellective properties (as far as we currently know) and do not have the potential (given current science, at least) to have such. Rabbits however might be argued to be intellective supposita, that their intellectual capacity is much less then most human children and the fact that we are not able to communicate with them (currently) does not mean they are not intellective supposita.
“blastocyst will unfold into an adult human through its own immanent powers”
If and only if it attaches successfully and properly to the mothers womb and does not contain significant genetic defects that will cause it to self destruct.
Sure. No one ever guaranteed success. Newborns depend on mothers to provide food – but note that they seek out the nipple. Vagrants are dependent on soup kitchens. Even an adult must attach himself successfully and properly into the cultural web of which he is a part. But it is the blastocyst that attaches itself; it is not some third party agent that seizes the poor blastocyst by the scruff of its mitochondria and attaches it, will-he, nill-he, to some place he would not otherwise go. Even the born will sometimes have genetic defects that will cause them to self-destruct. Would you deny personhood to newborns, vagrants, and cripples? Some would. Or should we just accept the notion that biological organisms are exactly that: organisms, self-organizing, containing the principle of their own motions; and not do violence to the science of biology in the service of a political agenda.
+ + +
“rationalis naturae excludes non-intellective supposita”
Three problems I see with this, zygotes don’t have any current intellective properties when they are a zygote.
Of course they do. Once you realize that time is simply a fourth dimension of Einstein’s space-time continuum, and the “current” form of a being is merely a 3-dimensional cross section of the whole being. Would you say that a pencil has no eraser simply because you are looking at its point?
Second, the brain dead likewise do not have intellective properties (as far as we currently know) and do not have the potential (given current science, at least) to have such.
Those asleep, drunk, or otherwise befuddled are likewise impaired in their intellect. Do you deny them personhood as well? Is it okay to “terminate” them? A capacity exists regardless whether it is being exercised. Too many people have spontaneously awoken from “persistent vegetative states” with full memory of matters that were spoken of in their presence to lend much comfort in “as far as we know.”
Do not confuse “possessing a rational nature” with “actually exercising the intellect.”
Rabbits however might be argued to be intellective supposita
Yes, but the argument would be wrong.
A moral argument ought not to depend on detailed physical properties of the universe. If Newton (who is not forgotten) had been correct about the nature of time, would you then agree that an unborn human has no rational nature? If not, then you should not invoke the prestige of Einstein (who is likewise not forgotten) in support of your argument.
I’m kind of surprised to see you say that, since I normally agree with your comments. Why don’t you expect the physical facts of the matter to have some influence on what is moral?
(Just to carify, I’m not saying that Minkowski spacetime can really be used to support the moral claims that OFloinn is making.)
There is a distinction, admittedly not absolute, between “facts of the matter” and “properties of the universe”. By changing physical law you might make it possible to, let us say, kill someone by thinking hard about how much you dislike them; and then a fact of the matter such as “the accused was observed screwing up his face in anger after making harsh comments about the deceased” will be relevant. But this would not change whether such an act was murder or manslaughter.
If you trace the line of human descent far enough back, you come to beings who are not anatomically much like us, who would not be interfertile with us, and who look rather a lot like modern chimpanzees. Are they also human? If not, which child was not of the same species as its parent? If they are, then why are chimpanzees, descended from the same humans, not human?
If they lack a rational nature, they are not human. If they possess one, then they are.
Fair enough, but then do you not exclude the unborn, and indeed children up to the age of, say, four?
Thinking about it, a genius chimpanzee might well be as rational as the most damaged humans. Should we grant them the same protections? I do not intend this as a reductio; I am curious about your opinion.
but then do you not exclude the unborn, and indeed children up to the age of, say, four?
No, because it is the rational nature, not the successful exercise of reason that matters. One must consider the whole organism in space and time, not simply its big toe or its initial blastocyst.
a genius chimpanzee might well be as rational as the most damaged humans.
There is a great deal of confusion between the powers of the intellect and the powers of the imagination. Having a rational nature does not mean “being intelligent” or “knowing how to do a lot of stuff.” It means the capacity to abstract concepts from concrete perceptions. It does not mean problem-solving or being trainable. It is because humans not only imagine things but also conceive of them that we confuse the two. Especially because any conception is accompanied by an act of imagination. Since ymagos ['phantasms'] are necessarily physical and material and are thus realized as neural patterns in the brain, the immaterial concept will always be correlated with brain activity.
You can form a mental image of Lassie or Rover, but you cannot form a mental image of “dog.” Is “dog” and Irish setter or a Doberman? What you imagine will necessarily be a particular, concrete dog or of the sound of a particular word like “Hund” or “canis”; but there is no mental image of “dog” as such.
It is this sort of thing that animals cannot do. Imagination is the result of sensation/perception/memory, and so animals can be trained – some more than others – to produce responses to particular stimuli, including making hand signs to which the trainers (though not the chimp) have assigned a meaning. If you say “ball” to your dog, it will leap up and run to the sofa, where it remembers the ball as having been. If you say “ball” to a human, he will wait patiently for a moment and then say “What about it?” The sound [b][ah][ll] is a sign to your dog but a symbol to your friend.
There are some useful comments here: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2009/11/05/4969/
and here:
Regarding “abstraction”: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/difficulties-in-understanding-abstraction/
Regarding “concept”: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/the-word-concept/
Regarding the confusion of intellect with imagination: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2008/12/09/the-two-powers-of-imagination-most-like-intellect/
Regarding the distinction between humans and other animals: http://thomism.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/what-really-are-uniquely-human-traits/
I see the distinction you are making, but how do you know what a chimpanzee can or cannot do? Or, for that matter, what a brain-damaged human can or cannot do? It seems to me that there exist many humans with no capacity to generalise.
Further: Suppose I invent a brain-changing elixir, which vastly increases the ability-to-generalise. Used on a human of average intellect, it makes Einsteins and Hawkings; if fed to a chimpanzee, it makes beings of what used to be the average human intellect, which the Einsteins and Hawkings promptly employ as janitors. Then must you not say that an un-improved chimpanzee has a rational nature, since its future world-path will almost certainly intersect with some of my elixir? The demand for janitors, of course, will in this world considerably outstrip the demand for world-class scientists; thus the probability that a chimp will be improved is at least as high as the probability, in our world, that an infant will be fed. Yet it seems to me that a fundamental moral question like personhood ought not to be changeable by technology.