|
|
Post by Oriet on Aug 2, 2009 12:33:46 GMT -5
Oriet -- you mean like Chimerism? Yes. |
|
|
|
Post by Undecided on Aug 4, 2009 3:09:13 GMT -5
I would argue that 'personhood' is a concept graduated by age, with the following evidence:
-newborn children apparently come prepackaged with one negative emotion only; the other emotions come in the weeks following birth.
-as children age, their perception and cognition change dramatically: they complexify.
-the brain is not really 'hardwired' until about age eleven.
-analytical and deep thought processes continue to mature into the twenties.
That would be a start for trying to define what makes a person objectively. However, I think that personhood is ultimately a subjective concept, determined by our ability to empathise with an individual.
|
|
|
|
Post by anti-nonsense on Aug 4, 2009 13:33:19 GMT -5
I would say that personhood is defined by the point when most people can readily detect an individual personality there that CAN be empathized with. Newborns seem mostly indistinguishable and random in behavior except to their parents, but within a year or two they start to develop a real personality that even others can see if they spend a bit of time watching.
Newborns are human, but not yet a person. They can however feel pain and discomfort, and thus even if they are not yet full people it's wrong to kill them for being the wrong gender or something like that. I also feel very uncomfortable with abortion at 7 months gestation or later because a 7-month fetus can survive out of the womb without too much trouble and can surely feel pain and the methods they use to abort late term fetuses are presumably very painful.
|
|
