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What is a Human Being?

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Phoenix32890
 
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 08:13 am
The Terri Schiavo case has opened a lot of ethical questions for me. What can we reasonably and ethically say are the criteria for being "human"? Is an individual who has no cognition, is in a persistent vegetative state a human being, or merely a body whose heart is beating, and whose lungs are functioning?

At what point is an individual so damaged, that they no longer can be considered human, with the rights of a person? I am not now speaking of severely disabled individuals, whom, IMO, are certainly entitled to the rights and privileges of any person.

To what I am referring, is an individual who is basically is living only because the autonomic nervous system is intact, but has absolutely no cognitive function.

I know that this is an emotionally loaded question, and that people have strong feelings abut it. My expectation is that this thread is addressed in a serious, prudent fashion.
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theantibuddha
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 08:35 am
This is a question one can expect from the legal system, yet it is (and I say this meaning no disrespect) a stupid question in a certain sense.

There is no answer to this, not pre-existing. No language (with the exception of S.I. I suppose) possesses the degree of accuracy and precision required for legal definitions. One must be defined either by the legislative or the judicial systems. Ideally it should be the legislative since it is ridiculous for one group of people to set down the law and then for it to need to be re-interpreted by another before it can be used.

Being a human is not a binary or boolean state. There is no dividing line upon which one side is human and another is not.

Are the HeLa cells human? They have human DNA and they're alive. Yet they're cancerous cells and not in human form. Is an unborn featus human? If so, what about a gamete? A corpse? Someone with down syndrome? Their DNA is no longer effectively human.

Legal decisions have to be made, their answers can not simple be found to be pre-existing.
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 09:09 am
theantibuddha- Because of the Schiavo case, I do believe that this question needs to be clarified legally.

Legal opinion was not what I wanted on this thread. What I was asking, is in each of our own minds, what is the rational, logical answer?
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theantibuddha
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 10:01 am
Phoenix32890 wrote:
Legal opinion was not what I wanted on this thread. What I was asking, is in each of our own minds, what is the rational, logical answer?


The question can not be answered.

The accordance of human rights are granted by various legal documents and agreements within which (unless the document or agreement is to be rendered useless) criteria for determining its applicability to a given individual should be provided.

If they are not then the agreements can not be held to. If the meaning is ambigous (as all such things are but to differing degrees) then the determining is governed by those who are required to apply the agreement into action.
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Phoenix32890
 
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Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 10:45 am
Quote:
The question can not be answered.


theantibuddha- Let me phrase this another way. If you had the authority to make a legal determination, what would it be?
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theantibuddha
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 01:47 pm
Phoenix32890 wrote:
theantibuddha- Let me phrase this another way. If you had the authority to make a legal determination, what would it be?


Depends upon my motivation, need to garner popular support for re-election, obligation to follow various international agreements

The reason that the legislative authorities do not create laws regarding this subject is that passing them in either direction would lose them votes, thus forcing them to make broad decrees on human rights which are left to the judicial authorities to interpret in such sensitive cases.

....

If I had my way it would be. Any human being incapable of action and comprehension who can not survive without life support from this moment onwards with no chance of recovery will not be supported by civil authorities. Private individuals may offer payments to provide support should that be their wish to do so with the payer being in charge of the care that is provided. The decision whether to allow support rests firstly with the person's legally declared representative, then their spouse, then their immediate family and finally random acquantances.

Simple enough really.
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Nietzsche
 
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Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 02:12 pm
Re: What is a Human Being?
Phoenix32890 wrote:
What can we reasonably and ethically say are the criteria for being "human"? ... To what I am referring, is an individual who is basically is living only because the autonomic nervous system is intact, but has absolutely no cognitive function.


It is my opinion life ends when the brain stops functioning. The individual described above is dead. I'll admit I haven't given this too much thought, but that's my initial reaction.
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 04:00 pm
Nietzsche- I don't think that life ends when a person has no brain function, but HUMAN life does. Individuals are living in a persistent vegetative state all the time, but I question as to whether they can be classified as, "human".

To me, it is the presence of cognition, no matter how tenuous, that renders the individual as a human being.
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Nietzsche
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 10:39 pm
Phoenix32890 wrote:
Nietzsche- I don't think that life ends when a person has no brain function, but HUMAN life does. Individuals are living in a persistent vegetative state all the time, but I question as to whether they can be classified as, "human".

To me, it is the presence of cognition, no matter how tenuous, that renders the individual as a human being.


I agree.
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Siren of the Shower
 
  1  
Reply Sun 20 Mar, 2005 10:55 pm
In the logical, realistic, socio-economic sense, a human being would include capabilities of performing basic biological functions in order to survive self-dependently.

But as a human being speaking to other human beings...are there certain duties one should assume as a person, an urge for personal achievement over the course of their life? Should one attempt to reach self-fulfillment...or have a duty to develop their minds to their specific greatest potential? Or is the definition of human life, simply to carry out each biological time clock until they are unable to live as human beings anymore - that is to say, until they are unable to be cognitive?

Is there more to being "human" than simply biology?
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Mon 21 Mar, 2005 01:40 am
Quote:
Is there more to being "human" than simply biology?


Siren of the Shower- Welcome to A2K! Very Happy

Yes, I do believe so. I think that there are many people who are severely damaged, but human nonetheless. IMO, where there is no cortical functioning, as in a persistent vegetative state, that one might consider that the individual involved has lost his humanity, and is simply a shell.

At that point, if one agrees with my premise, it seems to me that that individual would NOT be entitled to the same rights and considerations given a sentient human being.

Technology and medicine, being at the state it is today, is certainly capable of determining whether an individual is able to utilize neurological function other than the autonomic nervous system.
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Prospero
 
  1  
Reply Mon 21 Mar, 2005 05:26 am
I find myself , as I search for a meaningful answer to your question, Phoenix, most interested in considering what I would wish for myself and those I love.

I, also, feel that a person so unfortunate as to no longer have higher brain functioning, also no longer has an existence that can be defined as human, nor even truly, for instance, mammalian, since many animals other than ourselves I would determine to have a perfectly meaningful existence, and to be as capable of pleasure and and benefit from life as ourselves.

For myself, and those I love, including animals, I would not consider such life as persons in Ms Schiavo's unfortunate state, as I understand it to be, endure to be true vertebrate life. I would not allow a being whose fate I had a say in to continue in such a state, and I would no longer consider my own life to be meaningfully human in such circumstances.

Of course, this is a delicate and complex matter. This is why I have chosen to be guided by my heart, for want of a better word, rather than severe logic.

However, philosophers like Peter Singer are interesting to read in such matters.

May I say that I have been personally involved in a decision to withdraw heroic life support for a much loved, and young, person in a similar state, although the decision was immeasurably easier because the young person in question was unable to maintain breathing by themselves. For us, there was no question that this beloved person was already dead, the body was a lovely shell. Withdrawing medical intrusion was a simple matter of form following reality. The human person was gone.
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 08:17 am
I wrote this thread awhile ago, and got a few, but thought provoking answers.

Science has reached a point where an individual may be kept alive indefinitely through medical intervention, even if the person is bereft of the slightest bit of cortical functioning.

Again, I would like to throw out this question: What makes a person human? At what point, is the individual so damaged, that it is not reasonable to consider his life a human existence?

I am not concerned about the legal aspects of this issue, but the moral and philosophical ones.
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JLNobody
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 12:40 pm
Phoenix, I havn't read the thread yet, but it seems to me that you are focusing not so much on the technical (biological or legal) question of what is a human being. Am I right to suggest that your focus is on the nature of personhood?
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 03:31 pm
JL- although you are correct in thinking that I AM focusing on the nature of personhood, I don't think that you can eliminate the biological as one of the parameters.
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kuvasz
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 08:39 pm
sentience or at least the potential for it. and that last clause opens up the whole moral issue of abortion.

thereis nothing more precious to humans that their self-hood, exisitence without it is impossible to still be described as human.

one would think that humans would cherish this sentience, this special thing that allows mere mud to think, to talk, but we don't. we kill those with sentience, we kill that which is potentially sentient all the same.
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Montana
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 09:29 pm
I consider someone to be a human being until they die.
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Omar de Fati
 
  1  
Reply Sun 17 Apr, 2005 10:03 pm
Any living or dead organism classified as a member of the family Hominidae is a human being. The lack of cognition doesn't preclude membership. At the heart of the Shiavo argument is not what is or isn't a Human Being, rather, what is or isn't a living (or dead) Human Being.

Living human beings who are also citizens of the United States, enjoy particular rights enforcable by the state on the human being's behalf. At death, there's a cessation of these 'living human being' rights, & a commencement of 'dead human being' rights.
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Phoenix32890
 
  1  
Reply Mon 18 Apr, 2005 08:09 am
Omar de Fati- Welcome to A2K! Very Happy

I have a problem with your definition. There was no question that Terri was alive, but was she human?


Quote:
Living human beings who are also citizens of the United States, enjoy particular rights enforcable by the state on the human being's behalf. At death, there's a cessation of these 'living human being' rights, & a commencement of 'dead human being' rights.


If one were to go along with your statement, the law could NEVER allow a feeding tube removed, or a ventilator disconnected. There obviously is a middle ground, between someone being a human being, and someone being dead. It is that middle ground that I am attempting to explore.
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Omar de Fati
 
  1  
Reply Mon 18 Apr, 2005 08:26 am
Phoenix32890 wrote:
Omar de Fati- Welcome to A2K! Very Happy

I have a problem with your definition. There was no question that Terri was alive, but was she human?


Quote:
Living human beings who are also citizens of the United States, enjoy particular rights enforcable by the state on the human being's behalf. At death, there's a cessation of these 'living human being' rights, & a commencement of 'dead human being' rights.


If one were to go along with your statement, the law could NEVER allow a feeding tube removed, or a ventilator disconnected. There obviously is a middle ground, between someone being a human being, and someone being dead. It is that middle ground that I am attempting to explore.


Phoenix32890 ,

Thanks for the welcome.

I don't understand your objection. Living people have rights & dead people have rights. That, I believe, should go uncontested.

The argument whether she was human, forgive me, sort of tickles me. Of course she was human. She was still a member of the family Hominidae, still a member of the group Homo Sapiens. Sure, there's a point when a dead human being is no longer a human being. But it occurrs so far after death to render itself irrelevant.

I've been accused of being too literal in what I define as a human. But if there's a workable definition for what is a human being, I'd like to have it. Otherwise I go with this classification.

I think the law can allow more than the suggested consequences of my thinking. For example, if there were an indication in writing of her wishes that none of the said efforts be made to keep her "alive", then the law would & does allow exactly that.

There is no rational 'inbetween'. An organism is either a human being or it isn't. A human being is either alive or dead. What I'd rather explore is placing value on different states of being human & alive. I think it's spinning our wheels to essentially conjure up an inbetween & in my opinion is only helping us avoid admitting that sometimes killing each other (or letting each other die) is okay.
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