Sunday 4 September 2011

What does it mean: person v. human being?

A quick short question for you to share your ideas on: in the list of argumentative essay questions (personal correspondence, August 11, 2011), the one about abortion requires a definition of the term human being (q.3), and the one on machines and whether they could qualify for human rights (q. 8) depends on a definition of person.

  • Which do you think is the more challenging term to define? 
  • How do the two terms relate to each other? 
  • Which comes first?  

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3 comments:

  1. Peter.AUA5 September 2011 at 21:59

    1. Are all persons human beings?
    2. Are all human beings persons?

    I think the answers to both questions are "No".

    What do you think?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Golf5 September 2011 at 22:38

    According to human being's definition from wikipedia: Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving.(2011)

    That means mentally impaired persons are not human being. So the question of "Are all persons human being?" the answer is "NO".

    Furthermore, any robots or any creatures (have an operation put the real human brain inside ) with human's brain can be called a human?!?!?!
    If the answer is correct. So the second question of "Are all human beings persons" the answer is "NO" as well.

    To sum, the definition of "human being" is focused on the intelligent brain! What do you guys think???

    ReplyDelete
  3. Peter.AUA6 September 2011 at 07:32

    Golf,
    Do you agree with that definition of human being from Wikipedia?

    Both Mr. Wilson and Gemma disagree with any such definition, clearly accepting that even severely mentally impaired babies "are human, for God's sake", with Gemma rejecting the notion that they are sacred as "just speciesism" (Law, 2003, p. 129 - 130).

    However, I'm not so sure whether Gemmma or even Mr. Wilson would agree that these same babies are persons. Is there anything in "Carving the Roast Beast" that tells us or allows us to infer whether Gemma or her father think that these severely mentally impaired babies are also persons?

    References
    Law, S. (2003). Carving the Roast Beast. In The Xmas Files: The Philosophy of Christmas. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

    ReplyDelete

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