Age wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 11:43 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pm
Age wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 1:30 pm
A 'person' is the individual thoughts and feelings, within an individual human body.
That definition fits a foetus...at least in the latter phases of development, and we don't know about the earlier ones.
How and why does that definition fits a 'fetus', in the latter phases of development?
Because it has "individual thoughts and feelings." It can kick, move and respond without the mother herself instructing it to, and because it has its own body, including it's own heartbeat, circulation and respiration, and a unique genetic code that is not the mother's. That pretty much meets all your criteria there.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pmBut we do know for sure and for certain that babies can be born "pre-date" and be perfectly viable. And women who carry babies keep telling us that they have relationships with their child even before it exits the womb.
What do you mean by 'relationships'?
You'll have to ask a woman. They assure me that something very intimate and precious is going on there. But so far as I can tell, that relationship is nurtured by the sharing experienced between child and mother. I think most men find they have to await the appearance of the child before they feel the connection...but I'm not all men, so I can't speak for everyone.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pm How would that be possible, if humanity only commences when the child exits the mother?
What has 'humanity' got to do with this now?
I should perhaps use the term "personhood," although the fact that the baby is decidedly human as well (as opposed to porcine, bovine or canine) is of some import as well.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pmIt's all well and good to say, "Well, let's not just go gratuitously calling abortion 'murder.'" Okay. But let's not go the other way either: to rule without any certainty at all that killing a child
in utero is NOT murder. We have no reason to have any confidence at all about that.
Is this thread about abortion, killing, and/or murder, or about what each of "us" calls 'that' what is being carried within a pregnant female of the human species?
It's about both, obviously. Because if the entity in a woman's womb is not a child, then no murder is involved. But if it is, then it no longer matters what one decides to "call" what one does: it's murder. So the second question decides the first for us.
When a human being/person actually starts beginning to exist within a human body I really do NOT care.
And yet, without answering that, you would have to admit you have know idea what you are "terminating" or murdering. The status of the act remains unclear, unless you know what entity you're harming.
i just ask if "we" can agree on saying that a human body is born with no thoughts and emotions?
There's too much evidence to the contrary. A child is essentially the same being with one toe in the birth canal, and with that same toe out, 1 millisecond later. And out of the womb, we all concede that the child has thoughts, emotions and full personhood, so it's unreasonable to assume that a child with one toe in the birth canal is something completely opposite.
We know for sure, then, that a being-born child is fully human, and is a person in all the relevant senses (that is, unless we also want to advocate a rationale that would also permit outright infanticide, which I think neither of us does). So why is the child one millisecond before that "not a person," as abortionists are fond of insisting? Obviously, that millisecond does not alter what the child intrinsically is. So we know that for certain there is at least some period of time (let's say third trimester, for argument's sake) that the child is a person inside the mother. But then, we have the same boundary issue again, when it comes to the question, "What's the big difference between very-late second trimester and very-early third?" And again, we'd have to admit that
we simply do not know it's not a person.
And as long as that remains the case, we are immoral to kill the child. We may well be committing a murder, and have no justification for thinking otherwise, then.
If some one says that can not or will not agree with this, then I will ask them WHEN EXACTLY then do thoughts and emotions begin within the human body or the human fetus?
We don't know.
But that's the point. The
fact that we don't know for sure means that we are not free to kill it: because while killing someone is an immoral act, not-killing is not immoral. So we're only morally safe on the question if we permit the baby to come to term.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pm Of course, that's neither necessary nor true. Firstly, we might well know, and be obdurate about the facts because either you or I simply does not want to look at them. That's possible. But secondly, and more importantly, when we don't know if something is a human being, it's not a tie.
I have absolutely NO idea where you are taking this nor what you are TRYING TO imply here.
See my answer above. I'm saying that it is not moral to kill entities that, for all we know, are likely to be human. As I say, we know for a fact that a born-baby and an immediately-pre-born baby are both fully persons, in all the defensible senses. What we don't know is the status of the child earlier; and so long as we don't know, we're not free to kill it with saline injections, or tear it apart with forceps and flush it into a sink. That would be an evil thing to do to a "person." And we have absolutely no reason to be confident we're not doing it to a person.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu May 16, 2019 3:51 pmSo the net effect of that argument is, "Don't kill anyone until we know
for sure." At least, that's what an ethical person would do.
If you say so.
No, not "if I says so," but both factually and ethically, if you don't know that a child is not a "person," and if you believe that murdering "persons" is wrong. Because until you're sure you're NOT murdering, you ought not to be killing things.
Think of it this way. Suppose I gave you a gun, and said, "Just for fun, let's fire six shots through the middle of the door over there." And you said, "Is there anybody behind the door?" And then I responded, "Maybe: we don't know for sure. It could be nothing, it could be an animal, or it could be your best friend or your spouse."
Would you shoot the gun? Would you be an ethical person if you did?