The smarty pants people are at it again. Maybe they were never not at it but they seem a little more brazen recently. I thought maybe they would’ve learned some lessons from that nasty little affair we call the Holocaust but showing that it’ll take a higher body count than a few hundred million in a century, the progressive ethicists are cuing up the band for a big fat “ONE MORE TIME.”
Here’s the upshot: The disabled should not be considered people but some apes should.
In a piece scarily called “The Difficult Questions of ‘Personhood’” Mike Treder of the ironically namedInstitute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies writes a piece that should scare anybody who believes in the sanctity of human life. Forget that. It should scare every person on the planet not named Mike Treder because Mike Treder wants to be able to decide if you’re a person or not and therefore if you have any rights.
Every human is a person, right? And anyone we call a person must be a human, correct?
Well, no, not necessarily.
According to Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, ‘person’ means: 1) human, individual.
That seems as if ‘human’ and ‘person’ should be completely overlapping and identical sets, like this:
But many ethicists, particularly progressive bioethicists, say that for both legal and ethical reasons it is advisable that we sharpen our common definitions of ‘person’ and ‘human’ so that they do not entirely overlap. For example, profoundly disabled humans—whether badly brain-damaged or mentally handicapped to a severe degree—might not then be designated as ‘persons’ by this refined definition.
In that case, the sets would not totally cohere and would look like this:
The observant reader may wonder why there is so much extra blue space in the Persons set on the chart above. That’s because I’m going to suggest that several other species beyond Homo sapiens should be considered for inclusion under the definition of ‘persons’.
You ready? He starts off arguing for the inclusion of “Apes” into the definition of personhood. But it’s OK. He’s not saying all apes. The really dumb lazy ones shouldn’t be considered persons. So I guess the ones that co-star in television movies with Tony Danza should be considered persons.
CMR is as of yet usnure where Tony Danza lies on this chart but we’re rooting for him.
And just so you know how far these “progressive ethicists” (we prefer just calling them ‘imbeciles’) go, you’ve got to see the final picture they create.
That’s right. Cetaceans in. Disabled out.
And in the whole article, there was no mention of the unborn. Something tells me they’d be classified somewhere below Tony Danza and the Crustaceans.
You know Mike Treder would be dead set against any pictograph that didn’t include him in the elite. There is nothing progressive about their ethics at all. It’s ugly and its ancient. And it’s here. It’s here because it never left. This country has been practicing eugenics on the poor, minorities, and the disabled for years in the form of abortion. It’s happening every time someone is allowed to decide who is worthy to live and who isn’t. It’s happening every time we allow someone to decide who is a person and who is not. It’s a decision our culture seems easy with making. Until the deciders are not you.
July 6, 2009 at 3:29 am
As a disabled individual, folks like Mike Treder scare the crap out of me. If I wasn't committed to the principles of proportionate retribution and preemptive strikes, I would advocate capping eugenicists the instant they revealed themselves, no questions asked, to protect the self-interests of everyone else.
July 6, 2009 at 3:52 am
The roots of this lie buried deep and wide within our liberal establishment. We can go back to the founding of Planned Parenthood, forced sterilizations of the disabled, and those marked as retarded, or of a supposedly lower ethnic or racial group and witness decades of shame here in America. The ultimate consquences of the Mike Treders, et al…and they are millions…is so utterly Satanic as to give pause even to the master genocidists of the last century. There is power and money behind this movement. From some of our "best and brightest".
July 6, 2009 at 4:14 am
So where do faithful orthodox Catholic bloggers fall in that schematic?
July 6, 2009 at 4:23 am
Gee…shame on him for leaving out dogs and cats…they'll be filing a protest.
So what determines Personhood? IQ test? Speech? Economics? Politics? Religion?
What's wierd is the welding of other groups to create the same size box. Corporations and Cyborgs, Great Apes and Cetaceans…what is he smoking?
July 6, 2009 at 4:25 am
Microsoft is a person, but your aunt with Alzheimer's is not. Sweet. That means I can steal my software from her instead.
July 6, 2009 at 5:31 am
All humans are persons, but not all persons are humans.
3 divine persons (Father, Son, and Spirit)
Angelic persons (countless hosts of angels; in fact each angel is its own species, ergo there are countless species of persons, in a sense)
Human persons (on earth, in purgatory, in heaven).
A rational nature is needed for personhood. Modernism cannot comprehend personhood because it has abandoned metaphysics, it is rooted in subjectivism. Modernism therefore grants itself the license to define personhood and doll it out as it wishes.
Peter Singer and the like will claim that a trained ape is MORE valuable than an imbecile. Though an ape may have an animal soul of a higher order than say a clam, the most "intelligent" ape or dolphin, can never be as valuable as the most debilitated human being.
July 6, 2009 at 5:36 am
on another note, juridic personhood can also be created by those who have the ability to do so through a juridical act.
On another note:
Juridic personhood, which could be given to a corporation, merely means that the entity has rights and responsibilities under the law. Juridic personhood is established as a new creation under the law, but no act of law can give or take away human personhood. No philosophy or law of man can claim that any human being is not a human being.
July 6, 2009 at 6:38 am
I've got to echo Kevin, in that all humans are people, but not all people have to be human.
I haven't personally met any face to face, but that doesn't mean much.
July 6, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Well, if empathy, kindness, mercy and pathos are required for human nature, I'd at least count out Mike Treder.
Maybe the Cetaceans will make him an honorary dolphin.
July 6, 2009 at 3:20 pm
that's funny.
July 6, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Not everyone is born disabled.
I wonder if Mike Treder realizes that by his standards, he's one traumatic head injury away from non-personhood.
July 6, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Emil Berbakov-
He's probably one of the "I'd rather die than live like that!" people.
Tend to change their minds if they end up living 'like that,' but it's a type.
July 6, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Reading the actual article will reveal that Mr. Treder suggested that many ethicists, a set which may or may not include himself, say that some humans who are badly brain-damaged (by which I infer is referring to someone who is so bad off as to be considered "a vegetable" in colloquial terms) might not be considered persons. Dr. L, The article is clearly not about eugenics. SherryTex, your question, "What determines Personhood?" is precisely the one his article proposes you ask. i be ivy, lol. Also however, there is no suggestion that Alzheimer's makes one not a person, and corporations are legal persons by law right now. Kevin, you make a good point about "juridic" personhood and also taught me a new word! I do believe that the article is specifically talking about juridic personhood. Foxfier, you make an amazing leap of assumption and an ad hominem attack. Emil, I bet he does — why not ask him?
July 6, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Steve-
you make some amazing leaps of assumption yourself. I, at least, am willing to phrase it as a guess– one that is probably correct.
1) He's talking the folks some call "vegetables,"
2) being called "a vegetable" can remove person hood– rather amazing, since people do wake up from PVS (Lookie, mom! I'm a person! Now I'm not! Now I am!)
3) that defining away the personhood– thus opening up a nice group ripe for human experimentation that's "ethical" because they're "not a person"– has nothing to do with eugenics. (I have a bridge to sell to anyone who believes that….)
July 6, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Foxfier,
Sounds like you ought to get into that discussion group about defining personhood, once it happens. Be sure your perspective is included.
July 6, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Nope, I'd have to bring up the last couple of big national movements that decided not all humans were persons, and they'd use the Maul Of Godwin– now with +5 to avoiding the point!– to ignore anything I'd say.
Same way I don't argue women's rights with rape supporters, or theology with those who wouldn't accept Archangel Gabriel flapping down with a gold-embossed invite to meet the Big Man as proof that God exists.
Like mom says: "A man convinced against his will/ is of his own opinion still."
July 7, 2009 at 4:41 am
Just another case of "Just enough of us, too many of you".
July 7, 2009 at 1:54 pm
You left out aliens and coneheads.
July 8, 2009 at 2:34 am
I'm still rooting for Tony Danza.