Personhood as a Logical Fallacy?

[KelinciHutan]

I think all of us have run into the personhood argument somewhere or another at some point. Everyone has also probably noticed that every time "personhood" comes up, it's always being used to justify opression or harm of some group or another. Slavery, the US's treatment of Native Americans, Nazi Germany (Godwin!), the list goes on.

I've been working on the idea that "Personhood" applied in this manner, as it always seems to be used to justify some of the most awful actions in history, either is, or ought to be viewed as, a fallacy by itself, just like moving the goalposts or a false dichotomy. Some things that all of the arguments have had in common:

• All of them have divy up the human race into persons and not-persons on very subjective grounds.
• All of them define "persons" in fairly vague terms.
• All of them are used to justify something horribly wrong.

However, none of those things constitute a fallacy on their own. So, mostly I'm just wanting to bounce this idea off of some folks and see what y'all have to say? Anything shaking loose?

[Admin Kelsey]

Hey, sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I would approach it a bit differently. Start by saying that the conclusion--legal discrimination which denies fundamental rights to certain human beings--is wrong. That isn't an issue of logic so much as a historical and moral issue, but it's still secular. Then, go back and see what premises are behind their conclusion. Since the conclusion is wrong, one of two things occurs: either the logical structure of their argument is flawed, or (more likely) one of their premises is false.

[Simon JM]

Kelsey I thought you didn't touch the philosophy side of things?

Anyway it isn’t so much the validity is wrong but the overall inconsistency, and an error in the classification ontologically speaking, of what a person or Homo Sapiens really is.

Let's put it this way on consistency: say you have two societies that based their moral in-group on personhood, but one allowed infanticide after birth -but before it became a person at around 18month- & the other only allowed it early in pregnancy. Now they both maybe valid in their overall arguments as to why they have picked personhood, but only the former is being consistent or non arbitrary on how it is applies this, while the other rationalizes its prohibition against infanticide for non person humans.

Secondly you are dealing with a fundamental flaw of how Western Philosophy approaches what a thing is, thinking that you have to have a present capacity to be a thing, when in fact we have complex machines where we are quite prepared to grant the classification of a certain capacity even if that capacity is latent.

[berniebacon]

It takes a bit of mind stretching and may not convince many people, but I always wonder what is going to happen to the personhood argument when medical science reaches the point where all one's natural organs can be replaced by artificial ones, thereby extending people's lives past the point of being biologically "human" (or biological anything).

Also if one has to fit some scientist's definition of being "biologically human" to have the right to life, what happens if and when intelligent extraterrestrial life is encountered by humans. Will short sighted humans feel they can legally kill non-humans, and would this lead to a war with a non-human race with as much or more intelligence or military technology than we possess?

I prefer to talk about loss prevention. Regardless of whether or not the unborn fit the "correct" biological definition of "human being" they lose the same thing that humans or "post humans" as described above lose by being destroyed. Prolifers are trying to prevent that loss. I don't dislike the idea of being killed because I satisfy the definition of "human being;" I want to stay alive to continue having opportunities that only humans have the potential to take advantage of or create for ourselves. In fact I became prolife after hearing prochoice arguments that the unborn are "ONLY" potential life (maybe they are, but what do you mean "only"?). It is my potential to live a couple more decades that I want protected by laws; I don't see how I can demand that protection while agreeing that the century or more the unborn have the potential to live is expendable.

[Cde. ☭]

I think that those doctrines could make sense if ethics was restricted to killing, but there are a multitude of other actions from fraud to rape that are also immoral.

I also tend to shy away from potentiality arguments, as they far to easily fall into the "any cell could be cloned into a human being"-type arguments.
As for robots, I think that opens the door to advanced enough computer programs being granted rights, and even any computer if the potentiality argument is included.

I don't think intelligent aliens provide any sort of refutation for evolutionary morality, either. It seems rather circular to claim that it does.

[Simon JM]

It takes a bit of mind stretching and may not convince many people, but I always wonder what is going to happen to the personhood argument when medical science reaches the point where all one's natural organs can be replaced by artificial ones, thereby extending people's lives past the point of being biologically "human" (or biological anything).

Also if one has to fit some scientist's definition of being "biologically human" to have the right to life, what happens if and when intelligent extraterrestrial life is encountered by humans. Will short sighted humans feel they can legally kill non-humans, and would this lead to a war with a non-human race with as much or more intelligence or military technology than we possess?

I prefer to talk about loss prevention. Regardless of whether or not the unborn fit the "correct" biological definition of "human being" they lose the same thing that humans or "post humans" as described above lose by being destroyed. Prolifers are trying to prevent that loss. I don't dislike the idea of being killed because I satisfy the definition of "human being;" I want to stay alive to continue having opportunities that only humans have the potential to take advantage of or create for ourselves. In fact I became prolife after hearing prochoice arguments that the unborn are "ONLY" potential life (maybe they are, but what do you mean "only"?). It is my potential to live a couple more decades that I want protected by laws; I don't see how I can demand that protection while agreeing that the century or more the unborn have the potential to live is expendable.

I think the most important technological development would be A.I. or artifical wombs. But I'd imagine Catholics wouldn't have a bar of it.

[Cde. ☭]

Well, we already have AIs; they just aren't to the HAL 9000 lever of intelligence.

[KelinciHutan]

It takes a bit of mind stretching and may not convince many people, but I always wonder what is going to happen to the personhood argument when medical science reaches the point where all one's natural organs can be replaced by artificial ones, thereby extending people's lives past the point of being biologically "human" (or biological anything).

Also if one has to fit some scientist's definition of being "biologically human" to have the right to life, what happens if and when intelligent extraterrestrial life is encountered by humans. Will short sighted humans feel they can legally kill non-humans, and would this lead to a war with a non-human race with as much or more intelligence or military technology than we possess?

The first question runs into the "Ship of Theseus" thought experiment. Which is a fun one, but in the case that you're talking about if you tie both that and the second paragraph in to the "Future Like Ours" argument then you can declare both humans composed entirely of artificial parts and aliens as persons without any conflicts.