Nancy F. Cott in The Bonds of Womanhood tries to develop a picture of Puritan femininity in New England at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th centuries. The Women’s Sphere was the idea that the domestic side of life was meant to be run by women. This was the sole place for women in a functioning society. It is her contention that the development of the “Woman’s Sphere” was a necessary part of “shattering the hierarchy of sex.” (200) This is a contentious claim because the development of the Women’s Sphere is often considered to be a reincarnation of prior formations of sexual hierarchy. While on the surface, this criticism seems to be valid, it neglects to take into account a proper grounding and understanding of the Women’s Sphere. The work is invaluable because of this nuanced look at the development of external and internal views of women during this period. This nuanced stance has lead to its importance in feminine scholarship.

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Savage Systems details a horrible loss at the hands of past comparative religionists. In the work, Chidester goes to great lengths to detail how the European comparative religionists’ results paralleled the cultural conflict that was going on in the region. The comparative religion studies denied religion to the South African natives when they were in conflict with the colonizers. After the people were subjugated they were suddenly found to actually have religion. At some point, the subjugated people would start to resist the colonizers again. Once that happened and the natives were once again seen as the enemy, they were found to have no religion. This cycle kept happening over and over again.

During the times that the comparative religionists declared to be without religion, this lack of religion was purported to show that there was a fundamental lack of humanity in the natives. This fundamental lacking was used to justify the idea that the natives had no claim to the land. Often they were compared to animals in the European system of rights. Even when the comparative religionists did think that the natives had religion, they kept dismissing it as a religion from ignorance or a degradation of a previous, more sophisticated religion, such as Judaism, or Islam. The degradation theories also served to justify the taking of the natives’ land. The idea was that since they had also come to the land from another place, they had equal claim to it as did the Europeans. The apparent fact that natives had failed to upkeep their religion and had allowed it to digress instead of progress was taken as evidence that they fundamentally lacked something that would have given them full human rights. Since they did not have full human rights, this meant that the European claim to the land was superior to the natives. Chidester also shows how the natives were active in comparative religions. They suddenly were invaded by these people that wielded a great power. They reinterpreted their myths to account for the existence of the whites. This is also evidenced by their reactions of laughter to the missionaries’ messages. Chidester uses this to show that the frontier border is really a place of cultural exchange where each culture goes through a sort of synthesis as a result of contact with another culture.

What is not clear from Savage Systems is if the European comparative religionists were conscious of what they were doing. This is a sort of chicken-and-the-egg question. Did the comparative religionists try to form the colonial mindset towards the natives, or did the colonial mindset influence the comparative religionists. This question is important because it is the key in the moral evaluation of the comparative religionists’ actions. Chidester seems to indicate that this was a natural by-product of the colonizing mindset and was not intentional, but a subconscious correlation. This is further evidenced by the Christian bias that seeped into everything. The only thing that could count as a true religion was Protestant Christianity. In this sense there could not ever be a real comparative religion study, for real comparative religion study does not presuppose a master religion that all others must be a degradation of, a perversion of, or an obstacle to conversion.

The real tragedy is that with all the back and forth of the comparative religionists on the natives’ religions the real religious nature of the natives before the coming of the colonialists is lost forever to history. One can argue for the war of ideas and along with that, the idea that it is morally permissible for one idea to supplant another. However, under that line of thinking the conflict of the ideas must be waged without compulsion if the war is to remain morally permissible. Also, it is hoped that the losing ideas be preserved in history in some form. The case of comparative religions in South Africa does not follow such a template. Subjugation happened on physically and ideally. Chidester says that one can salvage is the border contact between cultures and their interplay can be studied and learned from.

In an earlier post:”The Unsound Argument(On Speciesism)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/on-speciesism, I talked about Cushing’s paper, Against Humanism that argued successfully against Humanism in the following two formulations:

Primary Speciesism :

All and only (innocent ) humans are moral persons

Necessary Agency for Personhood (NAP) :

One is not entitled to the kind of moral consideration that persons receive without the capacity for moral agency.

Primary Speciesism is obviously wrong. Cushing points this out when he brings up the case of an alien with abilities identical to ours. Another way to look at this is to imagine a great ape drinking an elixir that develops his cognitive abilities to match those of an adult human, a Dr Zaius:”Planet of the Apes Character List(Dr Zaius)”:http://www.movieprop.com/tvandmovie/PlanetoftheApes/character1.htm if you will. These beings would obviously be persons and therefore would have rights to life. There is nothing on a genetic basis that gives us moral worth. Strict Speciesism is easily thrown out the window with other prejudices such as racism and sexism. So far, I agree completely with Cushing.

However, when it comes to NAP, I think Cushing has a good point. If one holds to NAP, then they are forced to disallow for the moral worth of babies and the retarded. They would be on the same plane as animals because of their reasoning abilities. The notion that human babies have the same moral worth as cats is frightening, to say the least. I think one can modify the approach so that one is not lead into a indefensible position that Cushing lists.

As a Christian, I am tempted to use the easy out of the soul requirement for personhood. Under this view, whoever has a soul is a person (being with moral worth). However, this is empirically impractical, even it if is true. Who around here carries a mark designating if they have a soul? The Christian would reply that the Bible sets forth the beings that have souls. What about beings that the Bible is silent about? Say we encounter aliens. The Bible is silent on the status of their souls. How do we go about determining their moral worth? Christians maintain that the soul leaves the body. What about the people that have nearly died and come back? Did they lose their moral worth while they were seemingly dead? Then there is the animal issue. Christians maintain that animals do not have souls. What if animals are found to have the ability to be rational and communicate? Can we still sanction their wholesale destruction at a whim? If they have no soul and therefore no moral worth, then we can. On the other hand, what if God has imbued the higher animals with souls and did not tell us, since the Bible was written to our situation? Since there is no emerical way to measure the soul, this gets very messy, very quickly.

What if one were to only use a future of value requirement as a starting point in the search for personhood?

The reasoning would be as follows:”The Unsound Argument(An Objective view of Personhood)”:http://unsoundargument.com/papers/objective-view-of-personhood/:

1. A future has value if the subject will have the ability to make moral determinations.
2. X, in its future will have the ability to make moral determinations.
3. C1. Therefore, X�s future has value.

1. Subjects with valuable futures are personsO.
2. X�s future is valuable.
3. C2. Therefore, X is personO.

1. PersonsO have a right to life.
2. X is a personO.
3. C3. Therefore, X has a right to life.

While for most cases, I would prefer that approach, as it gets around most of his complaints and provides a way to develop a class of beings with moral worth, it has some limitations that are very disheartening. What about beings that had the ability to make moral determinations, but now are unable to and will never again be able to? An real-world example of this would be a person who has Alzheimer�s. Also, what about those humans who can never make moral determinations, such as the severely retarded? Under the above approach, those individuals would not have a claim to life. I am not prepared to make such a determination; my intuitions are too strong otherwise.

I want to build a personhood and ethical theory that uses the above principles, allows for the moral worth of the past-persons and person-like beings. The ethical side of the theory would use my formulation of ethical relativity:”The Unsound Argument(Real Ethical Relativity)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/real-ethical-relativity, which is nothing like ethical relativism, but instead uses consequentialism to resolve conflicts within a deontological framework.

So far, I can come up with the following personhood categories:

• Persons
• Entities that are below Persons
  • Past-Persons - beings that used to be persons, but are not currently persons.
  • Proto-persons - Entities, that if allowed to develop naturally, will develop into persons
  • Person-like Entities- Entities that have some of the qualities of a person, but not enough to qualify as a person and via natural development will not develop into a person.
  • Non-Persons - Entities that are neither proto-persons, not person-like
• Hyper-persons -Entities that are above Persons
  • Entities that have more qualities than persons and therefore have more moral worth
  • Purely hypothetical
  • God
  • Other Supernatural Beings
  • More advanced life forms, such as Star Trek’s Q.

I want to incorporate all of these classes into the personhood/ethical theory, but I don’t know how to deal with person-like entities. I might be able to solve the animal and severely retarded issues by introducing a clause that the more like a person one becomes, the more of a right to life they receive, a sort of graded personhood. All of this is still unclear where the lines of rights to life are and might seem very arbitrary. Perhaps all beings that are alive have a right to life and when conflicts arise, the beings with the higher moral worth win out over the less ones, ala ethical relativity’s consequences. More thought is needed.

Simon Cushing argues against Speciesism in his paper “Against ‘Humanism’: Speciesism, Personhood, and Preference.” He uses Peter Singer’s definition of Speciesism :

Speciesism…is a prejudice or attitude of bias toward the interests of one’s own species and against those of members of another species.

Speciesism is often called “Humanism“, which of course is Speciesism by the human race. Cushing uses two formulations of Speciesism, a strong and a weak:

Strong Formulation :

All and only (innocent ) humans are moral persons

Weak Formulation :

The personhood of a being should hinge (wholly or in part) on its membership in a particular species or group of species.

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In an earlier post, I asserted that since humans are animals, they have a certain minimum level of responsibility to the environment:”The Unsound Argument(Humans and the Environment, Part I)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/humans-and-the-environment-a-minimum-level-of-responsibility. If push comes to shove, humans must at least maintain their environment at survival levels. However, humans are not merely animals, they are also persons. Not only are they persons in the objective sense, but are persons in the subjective sense, i.e. moral agents.

I don’t have all of this worked out yet, but I want to posit that with increasing levels of personhood, there comes an increasing level of responsibility to the environment. At one level (animal) there is a responsibility to survive and that overrides all other responsibilities. At another there is moral agents and that they are responsible to how they treat other beings and their environment and at another level there is an awareness of nature and its beauty and that for its sake moral agents that are aware of it have the duty to protect that beauty.

I know how to build the bridge from self-survival to species-survival to all other species-survival, but I am not sure how to build towards the environment for its own sake. I think I am there but I am not sure how to put it into words. I will need to sketch out levels of personhood and match them with the levels of responsibility. So actually this paper will need a strong, developed view of personhood.

A while back Dave made a pretty good chart:”The Mindful Mission(Political Parties on Pro-life issues)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/03/23/pro_life showing the pro-life stance of three parties. I agree with most of his assessments of what stance is pro-life, excepting a couple therefrom. They were euthanasia, war, and poverty.

I want to use two of these areas to highlight what I consider pro-life.

What do I consider the guiding principle behind being pro-life? I can tell you what it is not. Pro-life is not simply being against death in any form or context. People die. It is a natural aspect of the human condition. I do not look upon old age as an evil, even though it brings one close to death.

Instead, it is the freedom to choose that makes our lives valuable. It is why slavery is evil. It is why totalitarism is evil. Freedom is why we shudder when we place ourselves in Kira Argounova’s:”Wikipedia(We the Living)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_The_Living or Winston Smith’s:”Wikipedia(1984)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four shoes.

When I apply this concept of freedom giving life its value to the common pro-life issues I am forced two conclusions; abortion is morally impermissible and euthanasia is morally permissible. The killing of an infant takes away all possible choices that person could every have. Euthanasia on the other hand is the supreme enactment of choice. It is the choice whether to continue to make choices. Surely to rob a person of that is morally impermissible.

So while an anti-abortion and a pro-euthanasia stance might seem morally inconsistent to some, it is still possible.

This is mainly a re-hash of part of a discussion over at the Mindful Mission about whether or not a man can be a feminist:”The Mindful Mission(Male Feminists)”:http://www.mindfulmission.com/index.php/2005/08/12/male_feminists. A lady by the name of Pippin had objected :”Pippin - Men can’t be Feminists(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17480 :”Pippin - Forced Sacrifice(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17484 :”Pippin - The Imposition of Morality on Others(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17488 :”Pippin - Equality of the Sexes in the Responsibility of Child Creation(Mindful Mission - Male Feminists)”:http://www.brendoman.com/hippydave/2005/08/12/male_feminists#c17490 to my belief that I agree with feminists on many issues, but reject the permissibility of all abortions.

When I talk about being feminist, I am speaking about holding males and females as equals and living that out. If anyone has questions about how I live that out, please refer them to my wife of three years. She will tell you if my practice in the issue meets my ideals. My wife and I use birth control. We have lost a child in the early stages of pregnancy. WE know what it is like.

Before I address her objections, I must note that when I said “the full and unrestricted right to have an abortion” I meant allowing for abortion in each and every single case. I left the my position open for some or no abortions being legal.

I want to denote the two positions on abortion as pro-abortion and anti-abortion. This minimizes the biases that the terms pro-life and pro-choice inherently contain. Who can say that they are the opposite of pro-life, that is, pro-death / anti-life? The very terms beg the question about the issue.

The objections that Pippin raised can be summarized as follows:

Objections:

1. Men cannot have an opinion on whether or not abortion is right or wrong because they do not experience pregnancy or birth.
2. I am not sure if Pippin is maintaining that a fetus has a prima facie right to life or not. That is a huge step in this process. I’ll try to establish that they do even if for argument’s sake.
3. Women should have the same sexual freedom men do. Allowing for unfettered abortions would restore this inequality.
4. Abortions are morally permissible because to have a woman be responsible pregnancies resulting from all willful sexual acts would be exercising control over the woman.

As I am still waiting for Pippin’s response, there is a chance that I am getting into a straw man here.

Response:

1. Because I cannot physically have a baby does not mean that I cannot determine if an action is wrong for “the other” to do. This is the classic mistake of postmodernism. It might make one unaware of certain points that make the determination hazier, but does not invalidate the determination… That is, unless one is a relativist. If the reasoning is the sound and valid, the conclusion stands no matter who makes the argument. If otherwise, then we would be guilty of a hasty generalization.

   Also, what about the anti-abortion women? There are plenty of anti-abortion women running around. The argument falls flat against objections from women who have the same experiences as you, the ones that the lack of supposedly invalidate my objections.

2. If the fetus has no right to life, as Marry Ann Warren believes, then of course Pippin is correct. The rights of the mother would then outweigh the rights of the fetus. If, however, the fetus has a right to life and the mother has a right to life, then that changes the whole shape of the argument. Judith Jarvis Thompson has argued:”Judith Jarvis Thompson(A Defense of Abortion)”:http://unsoundargument.com/ethics/a-defense-of-abortion-judith-jarvis-thomson that even if we assume for the moment that the fetus has a right to life, a pro-abortion position can still be maintained (My notes on her article are not completely entered into that post, please bear with me).

   She argues that when the mother has taken reasonable precaution against the pregnancy, i.e. cases of rape, incest or failed birth control, she is not morally responsible for the life of the fetus, i.e. an abortion would be morally permissible. Whiles Judith Jarvis Thompson just assumes that the fetus is a person for the sake of the argument, I would argue:”The Unsound Argument(An Objective View of Personhood)”:http://unsoundargument.com/papers/objective-view-of-personhood/ that a fetus is a person in the objective sense, even though it is not a person in the subjective sense.
   I do want to note that even a strong pro-abortion proponent like JJT maintains that abortions solely out of convenience are still morally wrong. (given that a fetus has some sort of a right of existence)

3. I agree that there is an inequality in the view that women are unduly responsible for the consequences of their willful sexual acts compared to men. However, I do not think the solution is to kill the fetus. Instead, we should raise the sexual responsibility of the men to the woman. Make men as responsible for the child as the woman is. Don’t punish the baby for the man’s actions. I think that there is a false dilemma in the reasoning of objection 3) because there is another option, besides a) allowing for abortion or b) having the unjust inequality persist, that is not considered in your argument. I might be wrong on the false dilemma though; perhaps Pippin has considered it and is only listing her conclusions.
4. I think I covered this in objection 3), that it is not a case of exercising control or one party and not another if all parties involved are treated the same. Case in point: If I say to you, don’t steal, and I hold myself to that maxim, I avoid the problem all together. The issue is not controlling behavior, it is about finding a universal ethical maxim.

With all of this being said I have not begun to argue about if and when abortions are morally permissible, I have only tried to deal with the objections that Pippin brought up.

If we are to accept Carmen Price’s conclusion:”The Unsound Argument(Is Emotion a requirement of Personhood?)”:http://unsoundargument.com/personhood/is-emotion-a-requirement-of-personhood that in order for S to be considered to be a person, it must be capable of non-rational behaviors, otherwise known as emotion; then what does that mean for personhood theory? Must all persons have a non-rational basis?

1. Only Persons have free will.
2. Persons must have the capacity to make non-rational behaviors.
3. :. A being that does not have the ability to make a non-rational choice is not a person.

Under this situation all robots and animals that simply react with instinct or via code are not persons. I think that the argument holds. If it does then here are some interesting consequences of Carmen’s argument:

• Spock (or a similar being) is a person.
  1. Spock has the capacity for emotions, he just chooses to deny them.
• Data (or other non-emotive android) is not a person
• God, if he is a person, must have emotions and therefore must also be non-rational.

The first two outworkings are just imaginative fantasy, they are of no real consequence, unless we meet or construct such beings. The last one may have interesting consequences for certain religious matters. It seems that either God cannot be completely rational and be a person at the same time.

When beginning any discussion in ethics, it is always beneficial to begin on common footing. For, without the same definitions, nothing can be agreed upon. I think Aristotle said that, but I am not sure.

Here are some definitions of some terms that will be popping up here in some posts about biomedical ethics.

Suicide: Self-killing.

• Typically there is not a distinction between levels of beneficence.

Euthanasia: “Good Death”(eu-good; thanasia-death) The killing of another at the request of the person killed.

• Distinguished from Suicide because another agent besides the self is the cause of death.
• the assisting the death of another for reasons of beneficence.
• Also known as “mercy killing or “mercy Letting die”
• There are several different “flavors” of euthanasia.

Assisted Suicide - Distinct from euthanasia in that it is the enabling of suicide by another party.

• Most commonly this takes the form of Physician Assisted Suicide, or PAS.

When considering the moral and ethical implications of these issues, be sure to distinguish between casual evaluations and moral evaluations. Casual refers to simply how something happened. i.e. The knife passing thru Matt’s head was the cause of death. Moral refers to the ethical evaluation of an act. i.e. It is morally impermissible to place a knife thru Matt’s head. A lack of this distinction is often the cause of muddled issues in biomedical ethics.

Casual Distinctions in Euthanasia:

1. Passive or Letting Die: The withdraw of treatment or sustenance that will lead to death.
   • Also known as “Pulling the plug”
   • Can take the form of removing food or water, discontinuing a vital treatment.
2. Active or Killing: actively bringing ab out the death of a person.
   • i.e. lethal injection

Types of Consent involved in Euthanasia:

1. Voluntary - Person requests euthanasia
2. Non-voluntary - Person cannot request nor deny euthanasia due to a lack of decision making ability. This is found in long term comas.
3. In-voluntary- The person does not wish to be killed.

While there can be an argument made whether or not voluntary and nonvoluntary forms of euthanasia are morally permissible; all would agree that nonvoluntary euthanasia is tantamount to murder.

Now that we have casual and consensual distinctions within the term Euthanasia, we can combine them to form the six types of Euthanasia:

1. Voluntary Passive Euthanasia (VPE) - Patient requests to be allowed to die for the easement of their suffering
2. Voluntary Active Euthanasia (VAE) - Patient requests to be killed for the easement of their suffering
3. Nonvoluntary Passive Euthanasia (NPE) - Patient is not able to request death or sustained life and is allowed to die for the easement of their suffering.
4. Nonvoluntary Active Euthanasia (NAE) - Patient is not able to request death or sustained life and is killed for the easement of their suffering
5. Involuntary Passive Euthanasia (IPE) - Patient requests to be left alive/continue treatment and is allowed to die for the easement of their suffering.
6. Involuntary Active Euthanasia (IAE) - Patient requests to be left alive/continue treatment and is killed for the easement of their suffering.

It is hoped that when one starts with this background when examining the euthanasia issue, one be able to sort through the topic clearly.

The following was brought up by a fellow alumni of Columbia College, Carmen Price. The paper was given at the 2nd Annual Philosophy Confrence at Columbia College. The confrence topic was personhood; the title of her paper was “The Necessity of Considering Motivations…” I do not have the text of the paper, so this post will work off of her handout, my notes and my memory.

Her formal argument from her handout is as follows: (conclusions are in bold)

The Necessity of Considering Motivations Notes
by Carmen Price.

1. If S is a Person, then she is capable of reason.
2. If S is capable of reason, then she is capable of acts directed by reason.
3. It follows that if S is a person, then she is capable of acts directed by reason.
4. S is either capable of acts directed by reason, or not capable of acts directed by reason, but not both.
5. If S is a person, the it is not the case that S cannot commit acts directed by reason.
6. S is either capable of acts not directed by reason or not capable of acts not directed by reason.
7. If S is not capable of acts directed by reason, then S is not a person.
8. If S is a person, then S is capable of acts not directed by reason.
9. If S is capable of acts not directed by reason, then S is susceptible to some influence other then reason (i.e. motivations)
10. If defining S as a person requires that S is capable of reason, then defining S as a person also requires that S is susceptible to motivations.

The implication of the paper is that personhood must require non-rational action, or the presence of emotion. This means that purely rational beings are not persons. This has some intersting implications in the personhood debate.

Using this argument, which I believe holds, Aristolte’s God, and most people’s ideas of Robots cannot be persons. So, it would seem that God, if it is a person, must have emotion as a quality. Likewise, in order for a Robot to be considered as a person it too must be capable of emotion.

What do you think?