Personhood & a Brief Christological Note

There's been a lot of discussion over the last couple of days on some blogs (Ben Domenech, Louder Fenn, my own earlier posts, and some things by Mark Byron) on the question of what it is to be a person in light of the cloning issue and broad libertarian support for cloning. I'd like to make a couple further contributions to that discussion.

Last summer I was involved in a brief discussion on stem cell research and the moral status of the human embryo on a now-defunct Delphi group. I'd like to reproduce that discussion here, slightly edited.

My initial post

First, a couple links:

A great article on the biological facts concerning the origin of the human being by Dianne Irving. [I've previously linked that article here at my blog]

A great article on the "personhood" issue at Libertarians for Life.

Finally, another article on the "parasite" issue (the claim that the fetus is a parasite).


An argument:

1. A human person is intrinsically valuable.
2. A human person is a body.
3. That body came to exist at the moment of conception.
4. Therefore that being which is intrinsically valuable came to exist at the moment of conception.

The only way out of this is to deny one of the first two premises, thereby either denying the inalienable rights of the human being or falling into a radical dualism regarding the human person.

A definition of personhood:

"A person is a being which has the active capacity to reason & freely-will (R&FW)."

Why does a person only need the capacity to R&FW, instead of actually R&FWing? Because when we are newly-borns, when we are asleep, and if we are in a reversable coma, we are not at that moment R&FWing. But these beings are all recognized as human persons; why? Because although they may not actually R&FW, they all have the potential to do so, as does the embryo.

Why an active capacity? Because, as many people have pointed out, any cell now has the capacity/potential to become an adult human being, through the process of cloning. However, in order for (say) a skin cellto become an adult human, something must be DONE TO it; it cannot OF ITSELF become an adult human. I.e., it has the passive potential to become an adult human.

OTOH, embryo and all succeeding stages of development have the ACTIVE capacity to R&FW. That is, the embryo will OF ITSELF develop to the point at which it can R&FW. It does not need to have any process performed upon it; it will self-develop to the adult stage.

This thus renders the "sperm & eggs are potentially human, too" and "every cell in the human body are potentially human, too" arguments irrelevant & specious.

End of my first post

Someone (call him Joe) called into question the third step in my argument, stating that it could be denied. I responded thus:

I refer you to the first linked article in my original post. From an embryological point of view, the human organism/body comes to exist at the moment of conception. This is not a religious, political, or philosophical judgment, but a biological/embryological/scientific fact, as evidenced in said article.

Allow me to quote a portion of this article (which should be read in its entirety):

[I'm not including the quote here for brevity. Just go read the article :-)]

End of my second post

My interlocutor "Joe" replied in this way:

"From a purely scientific perspective,....irrefutable."

Irrefutable? Then it isn't science. I retract my earlier statement. The question is not when life starts, but personhood.

I then responded to Joe:

"The question is not when life starts, but personhood."[His last line.]

Then you would apparently deny the 2nd premise of my argument, that the human person is a body, thus asserting a radical dualism with regard to the human person, i.e. that the person is an exclusively-spiritualentity which merely dwells in the material reality which is the body. Such a viewpoint reduces bodily life to an instrumental rather than an instrinsic good.

At this point I would recommend Robert P. George's article "A Clash of Orthodoxies".

Allow me to quote a portion of this article:

[I am again removing the quote for brevity's sake. But since I haven't linked this article before, I'll provide the first and last lines of the section I quoted so that you can locate it in the article.]

Let’s take the central issues of life and death. If we lay aside all the rhetorical grandstanding and obviously fallacious arguments, questions of abortion, infanticide, suicide, and euthanasia turn on the question of whether bodily life is intrinsically good, as Judaism and Christianity teach, or merely instrumentally good, as orthodox secularists believe.

[...]

From these arguments one rationally concludes that the body, far from being a nonpersonal and indeed sub–personal instrument at the direction and disposal of the conscious and desiring "self," is irreducibly partof the personal reality of the human being. It is properly understood, therefore, as fully sharing in the dignity—the intrinsic worth—of the person and deserving the respect due to persons precisely as such.

"Joe" never replied.

At this point, "Sven" jumped in, with this post, beginning by quoting my original post:

1. A human person is intrinsically valuable.
2. A human person is a body.
3. That body came to exist at the moment of conception.
4. Therefore that being which is intrinsically valuable came to exist at the moment of conception.

The only way out of this is to deny one of the first two premises, thereby either denying the inalienable rights of the human being or falling into a radical dualism regarding the human person.

The first premise is shaky if one is picky. Valuable how? How valuable? Can't be infinitely valuable, because two humans lives are worth more than one. Valuable is a difficult term. We're presumably most interested in a common sense argument, though, so I'll ignore for now.

So allow those who disagree the chance to walk right out door number two, then. If you accept your own argument, you'd better haul it to the nearest graveyard and start digging all those intrinsically valuable
humans out of the ground. Think of the terrible, uncaring, so-called "loved ones" that burn up all those intrinsically valuable human bodies instead of burying them.

We can argue with three a bit, too, unless you narrow down the definition of body. If you were to ask one-hundred people if human bodies have brains or hearts or limbs, one-hundred people would say yes.
An embryo is only cells.

[he now begins to quote from my definition of personhood]

Why does a person only need the capacity to R&FW, instead of actually R&FWing? Because when we are newly-borns, when we are asleep, and if we are in a reversable coma, we are not at that moment R&FWing. But these beings are all recognized as human persons; why? Because although they may not actually R&FW, they all have the potential to do so, as does the embryo.

Newborns reason. Sleeping people have personal identities, though. If I'm asleep, and someone asks you if I favor stem-cell research, you can answer, "Yes, he does." If I were dead, you'd think the questioner a moron for not using the past tense and answer, "Well, he used to, but not anymore." If I (and I shouldn't even use "I") were just a cell, you'd just stare at the questioner and think him crazy. "Persons" require a personal identity, which requires ideas.

End of Sven's post

And here's how I replied:

What do I mean by intrinsically valuable? That the person has value not for what s/he can do, for his/her appearance, for his/her abilities, but simply for what s/he *is*. Because of this, the person has value as soon as s/he comes to exist, not when s/he begins to do certain things.

Regarding dead bodies: I naturally meant living bodies. Please excuse me for that oversight.

Regarding bodies & their organs, I would first point again to the article on the origins of the human being/organism, which scientifically demonstrates that the physical aspect of the human person begins to exist. Secondly, I would agree that most people would state that human bodies have hearts, lungs, etc., because most people think of the adult human being when asked about human bodies. Most people would also state that human bodies have teeth, but that is not the case with newborns. My point? The fact that an embryo does not actually have various organs does not mean that it is not a human body, because at that point of development, it has exactly what it is supposed to. It will (on its own) develop those organs as it moves toward adulthood (i.e. it has the active potential to develop those organs).

I would also disagree with your assertion that newborns reason, insofar as the brain of the neonate is not completely formed until some 30 days after birth (i.e. around 10 months after conception), thereby making higher brain functions impossible.

It is also incorrect to say that having ideas are necessary in order to be a person, in that newborns and those with severe mental handicaps do not have "ideas", yet they are recognized as persons. It appears that you require that a being actually R&FW in order for it to be a person, rather than recognizing that one only needs to have the active potential to R&FW.

End of my reply to Sven

That was it. I never got a further reply from either Joe or Sven or anyone else.

One other note, of a theological nature: Louder Fenn wondered about the distinction between human and person, pointing to the case of Jesus, who had a complete human nature, yet was not a human person.

Theologians attempt to answer this question in a number of ways. One of them is this: Everyone human nature that is self-subsisting is a human person. However, Jesus' human nature did not subsist in itself; it subsisted in the Person of the Divine Word, and because of this, there was no human person in Jesus' human nature. In every other case of an individual human nature, though, that nature is self-subsisting, and therefore there is a human person.

If anyone has any thoughts, criticisms, or comments, feel free to email me.

I hope it was helpful.