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Is an anacelphic baby a person?

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Is an anacelphic baby a person?

180 Proof
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Posted 09/27/09 - 03:57 PM:	#11
jsidelko wrote: Institutions around the world contain a number of mentally retarded adults with profound deficiencies in intellectual ability. Their functioning is so low they are at the level of one year old infants or less. Should they be candidates for euthanasia and should their healthy organs be harvested? ... Since the definition of personhood is ambiguous, I can see the practice of involuntary euthanasia leading to a slippery slope. Can any government be trusted to regulate such a program? No. No. In any case, involuntary 'euthanasia' of persons is tantamount to murder. Edited by 180 Proof on 10/03/09 - 05:57 PM. Reason: So far, so good ...
The question isn't "What do I believe?" but rather "What do I least disbelieve?" Absence of necessary evidence is evidence of necessary absence. [What cannot be done?[What cannot be hoped?[What cannot be known?]]]

DustyFoot
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Posted 09/27/09 - 04:44 PM:	#12
I think ethically both babies could be terminated until around 6 months old. Edited by unenlightened on 09/28/09 - 02:24 AM. Reason: punctuation

jsawvel
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Posted 09/27/09 - 08:55 PM: Subject: Soul or No Soul	#13
I think the matter really comes down to whether someone has a soul or not. I cant prove it either way. I would just hate to be the bastard in the whom who has a soul and is about to get "cut off." But, on that note, if you already have a soul, then you arent losing much anyway, just a material existence. However, if you don't have a soul, then you aren't really losing much either, because you hardly exist in the first place. You are just a collection of atoms and memories.

Drsmoo
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Posted 10/09/09 - 04:26 AM:	#14
mway wrote: it is not until a toddlers age that a "person" becomes self aware. Ridiculous.

jakeUSMC
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Posted 10/12/09 - 03:58 AM:	#15
jsidelko wrote: Is an Anacephalic baby a person? Anacephalic babies are born with out a cerebral cortex and, consequently, are lacking in any conscious awareness or potential for becoming conscious persons. Healthy human embryos are also non-conscious but, unlike the Anacephalic baby, they possess the potential for conscious personhood. Assuming that actual or potential consciousness are a criterion for personhood, my questions are this: Does a being with the potential for personhood have greater ontological status than a being without such potential? Is an anacephalic baby a person? Is the killing of the healthy unborn ethically less justified than the killing of postpartum Anacephalic babies? Or are they both unethical? Until science can give them a purpose, use them for science.

jakeUSMC
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Posted 10/12/09 - 04:01 AM:	#16
jsawvel wrote: I think the matter really comes down to whether someone has a soul or not. I cant prove it either way. I would just hate to be the bastard in the whom who has a soul and is about to get "cut off." But, on that note, if you already have a soul, then you arent losing much anyway, just a material existence. However, if you don't have a soul, then you aren't really losing much either, because you hardly exist in the first place. You are just a collection of atoms and memories. A soul is one's wanting to describe the use of the third eye, an astal body that is embodied with consciousness. Highly opinionative subjects, such as the soul, in my opinion take no function in such a highly objective subject such as ethics, because the soul is purely subjective.

baden511
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Posted 10/14/09 - 12:45 AM:	#17
Suppose we define a person in the limited terms of a human being who has conscious awareness (rather than just a human being). To kill a person could then be defined as denying them the possibility of further conscious awareness (in this case to make someone permanently brain dead would be to effectively kill them). Now, some of those who have already posted seem to think that there is a necessary equivalence amongst beings who are without conscious awareness (or without full conscious awareness). They are missing the point that some beings are in the process of developing conscious awareness and some are not. To kill the former is to deny them the possibility of conscious awareness just as to kill a person is to deny them the possibility of further conscious awareness. Babies are persons in development, to kill them is wrong because (leaving aside the fact that almost everyone who isn’t an amateur philosopher knows it’s wrong) it denies them the possibility of personhood, which they are in the process of developing. An anacelphic unfortunately has no hope of reaching personhood but babies do, so there is no equivalence between the act of ending their respective lives. Perhaps those amateur philosophers who would posit the killing of babies as moral should consider whether or not they would be alive to put forward their views if such a position were to be accepted and acted upon.
"Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." Moses (Numbers 31:17-18) Quality of life is determined by conscious/unconscious strategies in context that are benficial/detrimental with regard to immediate/anticipated states of consciousness.

crunchy
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Posted 10/19/09 - 06:20 PM:	#18
I'm glad you guys aren't running the show. Does philosophy have any practical benefit to society? Does one who consistently engages in speculation bring profit to society? Does one who's time could be better spent helping society deserve to live? Is it ethical for society to kill all philosophers? Crude and stupid. Life is life. It cannot be reduced to a concept and treated as such.
Man is the only creature which doesn't know his own nature.

Odin
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Posted 10/19/09 - 07:25 PM:	#19
jsawvel wrote: I think the matter really comes down to whether someone has a soul or not. I cant prove it either way. I would just hate to be the bastard in the whom who has a soul and is about to get "cut off." But, on that note, if you already have a soul, then you arent losing much anyway, just a material existence. However, if you don't have a soul, then you aren't really losing much either, because you hardly exist in the first place. You are just a collection of atoms and memories. I agree, as I was thinking that it was not a human I couldn't shake a sort of intuitively wrong feeling I get over the whole thing. I think the answer to this question relies on other questions we are incapable of answering. The dilemma in the present is whether we go with out 'gut feeling,' or most people's gut feelings anyway, or we go strictly with applying reason to empirical evidence. On the one hand nature would obviously destroy something incapable of maintaining its own existence On the other hand I think benefit of the doubt ought to be given to the creature having life. If it can't rationalize its existence anyway, there is no torment to it in keeping it alive.

jambaugh
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Posted 10/20/09 - 11:39 AM:	#20
There is a objective distinction functioning person (even though impaired relative to others) vs. a cognitively non-functioning "brain-dead" human body. An adult with 1 year old cognitive ability and an actual 1 year old both have the ability to reason and seek self benefit. They are persons. That a boundary exists is easy to see. Clearly there is a distinction of personhood between a live normal healthy human and a corpse. Clearly the boundary is not crossed when we consider corpse vs corpse plus living kidney as with a transplant donation. The dead man's kidney is not "a person". One can always creepy crawl through cases from a case of A to a case of not-A but that doesn't mean A = not A or that the distinction is meaningless. We know cognition and will function through the nervous system and brain so we establish boundaries between "not a person" and "we can't be sure" and between "we can't be sure" and "is a person" based on brain function. As we learn more about how the brain works and also what we mean by "person" we can narrow the gap between the boundaries around that objective division inside the gap.
James "Hmmmm.... toughy!" --Deep Thought (from the Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy)

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