Downs Syndrome Man Threatened with DNR

[The Dharma Bum]

[JDHURF]

[The Dharma Bum]

[lil bit]

Personhood is defined by birth. That is the point when we become a completely separate, self functioning individual human being, even if we need a machine to help us be one.

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Boris Johnson]

Protip: lil bit has no idea what the f**k she's talking about.

[Boris Johnson]

Anyways, time to engage with someone who can actually think and argue:

So J.D your criterion for personhood is rationality and self consciousness yeah? Something is a person iff it possesses rationality and self consciousness. (and interestingly here, though don't feel obligated to answer this straight out of the gate, it is critical for personhood at time t, that it possesses both at time t?)

My problems with this.
1) the rationality criterion, well it makes absolutely no sense to talk of either the prenate or neonate as rational. I would go as far as to argue that it makes no sense to talk of the child as rational till something like the 2nd or 3rd Piaget stage fo development, which I think i'm right in saying is 5-8 yrs. Of course rationality is not a simple atomic term and so if you can give a different cashing out of it here
2) Self-consciousness, on this I probably agree, I have presented a super srs argument that held something like this as key, however I think at the level your presenting it is a little nebulous. There's clearly some sort of important set of differences from the way a frog is self-conscious and a Capuchin monkey and thirdly you and I are self conscious.


Also careful about Signer, his use of potentialities has been pointed you by some of the more erudite pro-life people you don't really encounter outside of the literature, as self defeating. As he needs potentialities to secure against the 'sleeping man problem' (e.g why its not ok to kill someone whilst asleep) which it has been pointed out, why can't this be applied to the prenate?

[Daktoria]

[JDHURF]