I have no idea what I consider a person to be. I think that I wish it was binary because that would be neat and pretty and make moral questions a lot easier to answer. But I think that it probably isn’t. Right now I feel as though what separates person from nonperson is totally arbitrary.
It seems as though we evolved methods of feeling sympathy for others, and now we attempt to make a logical model from that to define things as people. It’s like “person” is an unsound concept that cannot be organized into an internally consistent system. Heck, I’m actually starting to feel like all of human nature is an internally inconsistent mess doomed to never make sense.
Do you think that all humans are persons? What about unborn children? A 1 year old? A mentally handicapped person?
What your criteria for granting personhood. Is it binary?
I have no idea what I consider a person to be. I think that I wish it was binary because that would be neat and pretty and make moral questions a lot easier to answer. But I think that it probably isn’t. Right now I feel as though what separates person from nonperson is totally arbitrary.
It seems as though we evolved methods of feeling sympathy for others, and now we attempt to make a logical model from that to define things as people. It’s like “person” is an unsound concept that cannot be organized into an internally consistent system. Heck, I’m actually starting to feel like all of human nature is an internally inconsistent mess doomed to never make sense.