The Frankenstein Syndrome

Jewish World Review ^ | 07.26.06 | Paul Greenberg

[MHGinTN]

I have a hard time buying MHGinTN's & hocndoc's assertion that it's because the body can't sustain itself without the brain. Bring the horse around to the front of your reasoning cart ... before directive/coordinating function is completely transferred to the brain, prior to there even being a brain and central nervous system, the organism that is you was already functioning as you ought to at your early age. Your analogy of sea mount breaking through the surface of the ocean to manifest an island ought to direct your reasoning back to the vital importance of connections and continuity ... without the sea mount under the air portion, there is no Island for it is instead a raft. You may prefer to believe Islands are rafts, but the reality is quite different; without the prior existence of the Island while under the sea surface, there is not later manifestation of Island.

You choice to deny the beingness prior to 'breaking out into the air world' is blatantly arbitrary, especially when science has defined the reality without the 'poof' effect, instead defining the life of the organism beginning at conception of the organism, not 'poofing' into exitence as if some pseudo-emergent property which then negates the prior state of existence in favor of seeing ONLY the later state of existence.

[jennyp]

Your analogy of sea mount breaking through the surface of the ocean to manifest an island ought to direct your reasoning back to the vital importance of connections and continuity ... without the sea mount under the air portion, there is no Island for it is instead a raft. You may prefer to believe Islands are rafts, but the reality is quite different; without the prior existence of the Island while under the sea surface, there is not later manifestation of Island.

Yesyesyes, but the seamount is NOT an island - UNTIL...

Eh. It has been fascinating. :-)

[Conservative Texan Mom]

The babies that stop developing within my womb at 6 weeks and 2 days and seven weeks and 5 days didn't really die because they were never alive. However the baby that stop developing within my womb at 12 weeks did die.(sarc) I grieved equally for all three.

[Diamond]

...Since an early-stage embryo has no brain, they simply are not a person yet.

...But an embryo that doesn't even have neurons yet, let alone a brain stem, simply cannot be said to be "a person who has died".

...Because in the second case the tragedy is fundamentally different in quality, because no actual person has died.

Since when is there a distinction between a human being and a person?

PERSON, n. per'sn. [L. persona; said to be compounded of per, through or by, and sonus, sound; a Latin word signifying primarily a mask used by actors on the state.]

1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature; the body when dead is not called a person. It is applied alike to a man, woman or child.

A person is a thinking intelligent being.

2. A man, woman or child, considered as opposed to things, or distinct from them.

A zeal for persons is far more easy to be perverted, than a zeal for things.

3. A human being, considered with respect to the living body or corporeal existence only. The form of her person is elegant.

You'll find her person difficult to gain.

The rebels maintained the fight for a small time, and for their persons showed no want of courage.

4. A human being, indefinitely; one; a man. Let a person's attainments be never so great, he should remember he is frail and imperfect.

5. A human being represented in dialogue, fiction, or on the state; character. A player appears in the person of king Lear.

These tables, Cicero pronounced under the person of Crassus, were of more use and authority than all the books of the philosophers.

6. Character of office.

How different is the same man from himself, as he sustains the person of a magistrate and that of a friend.

7. In grammar, the nominative to a verb; the agent that performs or the patient that suffers any thing affirmed by a verb; as, I write; he is smitten; she is beloved; the rain descends in torrents. I, thou or you, he, she or it, are called the first, second and third persons. Hence we apply the word person to the termination or modified form of the verb used in connection with the persons; as the first or the third person of the verb; the verb is in the second person.

8. In law, an artificial person, is a corporation or body politic.

In person, by one's self; with bodily presence; not be representative.

The king in person visits all around.


Webster's 1828 Dictionary

Cordially,

[jennyp]

Since when is there a distinction between a human being and a person?

PERSON, n. per'sn. [L. persona; said to be compounded of per, through or by, and sonus, sound; a Latin word signifying primarily a mask used by actors on the state.]

1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature;

Uh-oh...

the body when dead is not called a person.

So, what exactly do YOU think marks the point when a living person becomes merely a dead body?

It is applied alike to a man, woman or child.

A person is a thinking intelligent being.

Uh-oh again! Do you believe that an embryo - before any neurons have formed, let alone a brain - is a thinking, intelligent being? This definition presents a much higher bar than I do. A "person"'s life wouldn't really begin until much later in the pregnancy. In fact, Peter Singer's infanticide could be supported by this definition's criteria!

If you want to define "human being" as synonymous with "person", then we need a term for a body that's alive except for the presence of a living brain. "Living body", perhaps?

[Mr. Silverback]

ProLife Ping!

If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.

[hocndoc]

We don't count all those who are not a "thinking, intelligent being" as non-person humans. You just wiped out quite a few "persons" there.

[Diamond]

1. An individual human being consisting of body and soul. We apply the word to living beings only, possessed of a rational nature;

Uh-oh...

A person is a thinking intelligent being.

Uh-oh again! Do you believe that an embryo - before any neurons have formed, let alone a brain - is a thinking, intelligent being? This definition presents a much higher bar than I do. A "person"'s life wouldn't really begin until much later in the pregnancy. In fact, Peter Singer's infanticide could be supported by this definition's criteria!

To the contrary, it is the artificial dichotomy between human being and person that leaves no principle with which to disavow Peter Singer's functionalist definition of personalty.

There is no justification for such a definition because there are no degrees of being a person. The controlling phrase in Webster's is, "possessed of a rational nature" Potentialities or capabilities, whether of reason or anything else are limited to the kind of thing to which they belong. The food you eat will never have the capability of reasoning because its parents could not pass on something that they did not themselves have. Only the offspring of human parentage have uniquely human attributes, such as the potential for rationality. So the notion that there is such a thing as a human being which is not a person, yet has the capability of becoming a person at some later time is a contradiction in terms, because the potential for rationality demands a human subject as its possessor. Nothing else could ever possess that capability.

This etymological verbicide against persons is simply an old evil in a new form; namely, that when some people wish to exercise absolute dominion over other peoples' very life and death, the former have often attempts to dehumanize the victims for easier, acceptable and widespread killing. My question to you is, what lexical support can you offer to support the novel assertion that human being and person are not synonymous? You certainly cannot derive any from Webster's 1828. To pound this point home, see

Person... 4. A human being, indefinitely; one; a man. Let a person's attainments be never so great, he should remember he is frail and imperfect.

So, what exactly do YOU think marks the point when a living person becomes merely a dead body?

The question of when a living person becomes (from our point of view) merely a dead body is irrelevant and not dispositive of the the issue of person-hood because it assumes a living person from the outset. Only what lives can die. The fact that a person dies entails, among other things, that there was once a person alive. If there was once a living person, a being in fact, there was never a time when that living person was not a living person.

Cordially,

[steve-b]

Darwinists laugh when critics accuse him of being the father of modern eugenics. I don't know what would constitute proof for these people.

OK, I'll give you a clue.

Your proof has to use a definition of "modern eugenics" that is completely free of any ad hoc attempt to treat eugenicism as a new phenomenon (rather than simply a new marketing label on age-old racism).

If you need help, ask a Scotsman. Make sure to consult only a true Scotsman....