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Is personhood development a continuum? Or does it happen in an instant? If it's a continuum, then for a period of time you have someone who's a partial person.

Is personhood development a continuum? Or does it happen in an instant? If it's a continuum, then for a period of time you have someone who's a partial person. That doesn't make sense to me. How can someone be a partial person? That's why I think it needs to happen in an instant. And the only 2 developmental instants are fertilization and birth. I value a human's life more than any other animal's life. I think that's the same for most people. Without that, we might conclude that a dog's life is more valuable than a newborn baby's life, due to development time and abilities. > 7-24 weeks Curtis Means was born at gestational age 21 weeks 1 day and survived. If personhood might begin at 24 weeks, does that mean that Curtis might not have been a person when born?

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
> And the only 2 developmental instants are fertilization and birth. Well not really though, neither takes place in an instant. Both are complex processes that span some time composed of numerous simultaneous and sequential steps. I think some kind of partial personhood is more or less a given because biological processes don’t really happen in discrete steps. As for how that might make sense, a very crude example might be coming out of anesthesia or being extremely drunk. These are states where memory, sense of self, and consciousness can fade in and out independently; perhaps partial consciousness is a reasonable thing. Certainly many of the things we consider essential to our internal sense of personhood develop gradually, like our sense of self and, for that matter, our senses of the external world. We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood. > Curtis Means was born at gestational age 21 weeks 1 day and survived. If personhood might begin at 24 weeks, does that mean that Curtis might not have been a person when born? My intuition is that curtis would qualify, and that 21 weeks could be too late for lethal abortion methods. At the same time, if a baby were born braindead I wouldn’t assign it personhood. Being born isn’t enough.
- Thorrez 1y ago
  I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people. That's been used as a justification throughout history for causing harm to groups of people. >We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood. I agree. I think this supports my view, that someone can be morally a person, even when lacking aspects we'd associate with personhood.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion. >I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people. I think you need to in certain areas if you want to understand the world better is all. A braindead person isn’t the same as a non-braindead person, and there’s likely a continuum between them. My response is to suggest assigning a reasonable point between the two past which someone is a person.
    - Thorrez 1y ago
      >In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You seem to be agreeing there's not much difference between a fetus and an infant. But you're saying that this isn't an argument against abortion, because... are you saying killing a born infant is ok?
      - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
        Nope, you’re reading way too far into it. Given that born infants almost certainly possess a kind of “partial personhood,” the reason we assign them full personhood isn’t out of recognition of observable fact, but out of practicality and necessity. It wouldn’t make sense to structure society in such a way that newborns weren’t people, and would likely result in lots of moral harm. The idea of partial personhood doesn’t work in law or politics, even if its biologically founded, so we should choose a cutoff point that makes the most sense and prevents the most harm before which we don’t consider fetuses people, and after which we do.

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

> And the only 2 developmental instants are fertilization and birth. Well not really though, neither takes place in an instant. Both are complex processes that span some time composed of numerous simultaneous and sequential steps. I think some kind of partial personhood is more or less a given because biological processes don’t really happen in discrete steps. As for how that might make sense, a very crude example might be coming out of anesthesia or being extremely drunk. These are states where memory, sense of self, and consciousness can fade in and out independently; perhaps partial consciousness is a reasonable thing. Certainly many of the things we consider essential to our internal sense of personhood develop gradually, like our sense of self and, for that matter, our senses of the external world. We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood. > Curtis Means was born at gestational age 21 weeks 1 day and survived. If personhood might begin at 24 weeks, does that mean that Curtis might not have been a person when born? My intuition is that curtis would qualify, and that 21 weeks could be too late for lethal abortion methods. At the same time, if a baby were born braindead I wouldn’t assign it personhood. Being born isn’t enough.

Thorrez 1y ago
I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people. That's been used as a justification throughout history for causing harm to groups of people. >We don’t initially, as infants, know the difference between our body and the world. Does this make infants not people? No, not legally or morally, but in some sense they lack aspects we’d associate with personhood. I agree. I think this supports my view, that someone can be morally a person, even when lacking aspects we'd associate with personhood.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion. >I'm wary of classifying any group as partial people. I think you need to in certain areas if you want to understand the world better is all. A braindead person isn’t the same as a non-braindead person, and there’s likely a continuum between them. My response is to suggest assigning a reasonable point between the two past which someone is a person.
  - Thorrez 1y ago
    >In my opinion, they’re legally and morally treated as a person because it works in society, not because it expresses something fundamental about child development. It’s not an argument against abortion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You seem to be agreeing there's not much difference between a fetus and an infant. But you're saying that this isn't an argument against abortion, because... are you saying killing a born infant is ok?
    - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
      Nope, you’re reading way too far into it. Given that born infants almost certainly possess a kind of “partial personhood,” the reason we assign them full personhood isn’t out of recognition of observable fact, but out of practicality and necessity. It wouldn’t make sense to structure society in such a way that newborns weren’t people, and would likely result in lots of moral harm. The idea of partial personhood doesn’t work in law or politics, even if its biologically founded, so we should choose a cutoff point that makes the most sense and prevents the most harm before which we don’t consider fetuses people, and after which we do.