Ezra Klein: Humanity

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May 30, 2005

Humanity

Watch Tacitus equivocate:

it's not convenience, but humanity that is the core question. Is the fetus, embyro, blastula, et al., human? There are only three possible answers: provably not, provably so, or possibly. We can discard the first, since even pro-abortion, anti-life types implicitly concede the humanity of the fertilized egg and beyond by dint of their position on stem cells, the purported utility of which is premised entirely upon their humanity.

Tacitus uses the word "humanity" to mean two different things. In the first sense, the sense in which humanity is indeed important, having humanity is having a certain moral standing and deserving moral concern from others in something like the way that adult, living human beings do. In the second sense, having humanity or "being human" is simply a matter of falling into a particular biological category, as stem cells do. The two concepts are wholly distinct. Galadriel, Lt. Worf, and Chewbacca have humanity in the first sense but not in the second. Corpses, spilled blood, and stem cell lines have humanity in the second sense and not the first. The humanness of something is no guarantee of humanity, and vice versa.

--Neil the Werewolf

May 30, 2005 in Politics of Choice | Permalink

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Comments

I was fantasizing this morning:

1. Life begins at conception
2. On Judgment Day we all shall be risen
3. Something like 3/4 of all embryos spontaneously abort, most with the host, excuse me, mother never knowing.

So what will we see upon rising to Gabriel's horn? That the born are the minority, and most of God's children are better terms God's blastocysts?

I don't remember it looking like that in the Jack Chick tracts.

Posted by: Allen K. | May 30, 2005 4:03:29 PM

I'm always puzzled at the assumption that everyone agrees that the mere presence of homo sapiens DNA equals personhood. It's an entirely faith-based position, and hardly supported in reality.

Posted by: paperwight | May 30, 2005 4:39:07 PM

There are only three possible answers: provably not, provably so, or possibly.

He left out at least a few possible responses, including "The question is meaningless," and my own subjective answer, "Maybe, but so what?"

Posted by: Evan | May 30, 2005 5:31:43 PM

I don't accept the humanity of a fertilized egg.

Posted by: Unstable Isotope | May 30, 2005 6:47:00 PM

do you call an egg(little oval white things that omelettes are usually made of) a full grown chicken?
if not, why would you call an embryo a human?

Posted by: almostinfamous | May 30, 2005 8:05:11 PM

Which came first, the human or the egg ? Sounds familiar.

Posted by: opit | May 30, 2005 10:01:41 PM

What I see here is some sort of liberal conspiracy to raise Tacitus from the dead so you can beat up on him.

Last week Atrios had a link to Tacitus -- the first in years (well, at least for a long time.) That day Tacitus got more hits than in the previous six months.

What Tacitus thinks doesn't matter because Tacitus doesn't think. Why pick on Tacitus? Leave him alone to talk to himself.

Posted by: Karlsfini | May 30, 2005 10:43:43 PM

I gladly donate money to help human beings. I can't imagine feeling the same urge, or any urge, to donate to help blastocysts. Ain't gonna happen.

A clump of cells or a teeny blob-like thing with Human DNA is not the same as humanity, or a human being.

That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. ;)

Posted by: Cynthia | May 30, 2005 11:53:03 PM

Way back-when I took developmental biology (embryology)-the instructor put it succintly- that a fertilized egg was only a potential future being until it implanted into the uterus. Even then, there is still a high rate of miscarriage after implantation especially if there is severe cellular damage to the embryo. Not all fertilized eggs implant & not all embryos survive. So what happensto their 'humanity'? Just because a human embryo or fertilized egg has the possiblity of being human does not automatically allow it to become human.

Posted by: bigd504 | May 31, 2005 12:18:27 AM

I feel like this is an issue where, even though we have a majority of people on our side, we end up playing more defense than offense. On one Sunday talk show I was watching, the pannel agreed that the key moral issue underlying stem cell research was whether the ends justified the means. They meant for this to be a neutral framework for thinking about things, but I don't think it really is. Once this is your framework, it becomes so much easier for those who are against such research to come across as "principled", while those in favor of such research to come across as on the side of "convenience" or something similar. Think about it: often, merely *asking* the question of whether the ends justify the means is meant to imply that they don't. If this is your framework, then you inevitably think of Bush as on the side of "values", and it becomes hard not to respect their position even if you disagree with it. And, arguably, you don't pay a political cost for having an unpopular view if that view comes across as principled.

Here I think is a better framework for us: it's immoral not to try to help people suffering from Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. Basically, if you don't try to help them, you're a shitty person. You're either for people with Alzheimer's or you're against them. Of course, this is all an oversimplification, and there's a whole bunch of room for people to argue back that it's worse to kill potential human beings, etc. But "do the ends justify the means?" is an oversimplification too, and given my own view that nothing of value is lost through such research (so the means don't stand in need of any justification), it's by my lights a much more accurate one. I'd like to see fewer arguments trying to show that it's morally OK to do stem cell research, and more arguments drawing out why it's immoral not to do the research. That is, offense rather than defense. Same goes for abortion, but I've already written too much here.

Posted by: Justin | May 31, 2005 1:54:59 AM

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