Help Defining a Person

[Rosalinda]

Voco Pro Tatiano has stated:[sign]When an embryo fissions, this is not a new human life, it is the same life now shared.[/sign]

Dear Voco, Surely you do not think this is accurate? Should twinning occur in the single embryo; should the division be successfully completed, a new human form = new human organism = new human person comes into being. While the ‘same life’ is no longer shared they will however share an identical genetic code.

 

[catharina]

Voco Pro Tatiano has stated:[sign]When an embryo fissions, this is not a new human life, it is the same life now shared.[/sign]

Dear Voco, Surely you do not think this is accurate? Should twinning occur in the single embryo; should the division be successfully completed, a new human form = new human organism = new human person comes into being. While the ‘same life’ is no longer shared they will however share an identical genetic code.

Rosalinda, yes. Very well said.

Voco - can’t you see that the more you proclaim your view, the more you are negating its meaning. New human life is that. If a day comes when twinning (or more occurs) is revealed, we can then recognize separate (individual) lives. To argue beyond that for your view regarding atomic (and subatomic) changes is an exercise in futility. All new human life begins at conception. You’ve agreed with that statement. Can you leave it there?

To say more must be qualified with “science believes now that … .”

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Voco Pro Tatiano has stated:[sign]When an embryo fissions, this is not a new human life, it is the same life now shared.[/sign]

Dear Voco, Surely you do not think this is accurate? Should twinning occur in the single embryo; should the division be successfully completed, a new human form = new human organism = new human person comes into being. While the ‘same life’ is no longer shared they will however share an identical genetic code.

Dear Rosalnda,
I think it is precisely accurate in detail. I accept that where there was one life, there are now two, (or more), but neither, or none of the lives is the original life, none of the multiplets is older that its sibling, the life of each of the siblings began at conception, NOT AT FISSION. The individuality of the siblings began at fission.
Remember I cited the case of the separation of conjoined twins.
You will agree that a pair of conjoined twins is effectively a single organism, sharing a number of body functions. Some are so conjoined that they cannot be separated without killing part of the pair. Thus a conjoined pair of twins do not have two lives, but share a single life.
In the case of successful sparation, the surgeon then does not create a new life, but alters the jointly shared life into an independantly shared life.
Remember, life is not a thing, it is a process, and dividing and sharing a life does not make the parts equal to a fraction of a life, each life is a whole life. This is how binary fission works: one divided by two, equals two!
The surgeon merely completes the process of fission which started in the womb.
Thus a new life does not begin with fission.
The two new individuals each have a life which though a half share of the original life, is yet a full life.
Perhaps you might like to consider the life potential of the pre-window embryo to be greater than unity, it does not really matter.
I agree the numbers do not add up, but this is not math.
No matter how many copies of the Bible exist, there is only one Bible. (Assuming we are talking about the same edition.)

 

[Rosalinda]

Voco Pro Tatiano maintains:
[sign]I do not state, I offer a carefully reasoned proof.[/sign]

Respectfully, Voco, I beg to differ. The case of monozygotic (identical) twinning you have posed indisputably is interesting. However, your research consistently has failed to point out that the zygote in 30-35% of cases can split as early as the first two days after fertilization.

If the splitting occurred during cleavage – for example, if the two blastomeres (cells) produced by the first cleavage division become separated – the monozygotic twin blastomeres will implant separately, like dizygotic (fraternal) twin blastomeres, and will not share fetal membranes.

WILLIAM J. LARSEN, Essentials of Human Embryology (New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1998)

They will develop separate placenta and separate sacs.
These are called dichorionic, diamniotic (or “di/di”) twins.

As you have said “the devil is in the details”.

Your earlier posts have stated twins always share the same placenta. If you want to look at exceptions these are important exceptions to make note of.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Rosalinda, yes. Very well said.

Voco - can’t you see that the more you proclaim your view, the more you are negating its meaning. New human life is that. If a day comes when twinning (or more occurs) is revealed, we can then recognize separate (individual) lives. To argue beyond that for your view regarding atomic (and subatomic) changes is an exercise in futility. All new human life begins at conception. You’ve agreed with that statement. Can you leave it there?

To say more must be qualified with “science believes now that … .”

Dear Catharina,
I believe that in the main essentials we are in agreement.
All new life begins with conception.
But that includes the fissioned siblings, Thus they all too began their lives at conception, but not as individuals, but as a divisible embryo, which I will accept is a human being,(under construction), but still a human being.
Thus, though the life of the siblings began at conception, their individuality started at fission.
Thus prior to fission, they were not individuals, so prior to fission, there was no individual.
The problem we seem to have is one of language, where sloppy definitions are being misused.
Though the dictionary defines ‘person’ as ‘human being’, it is clear that this is in a legal context, so is referring to a post natal human being, not an embryo.
I allow that physically there is little difference between a pre and post natal human being, but the difference legally is enormous.
Age is counted from birth, not conception, even for identical siblings, which by definition share the same conception, so are identically aged.
Thus I actually consider it to be a linguistic error to refer to a pre-natal human being as a person, Individual, definitely, if beyond the eighth week, and person, only in as much as ‘person’ is a simile of ‘individual’.
So this all comes down to useage, and missuseage of words.
I accept, and even assert that ALL new life begins with conception, but individuality begins at fission, or after the point that fission becomes impossible.

 

[Rosalinda]

Voco Pro Tatiano, Yes, I share your fascination with conjoined twins. However, it is erroneous to assume a single boundary determines the number or individuals present. Both of the persons have their own soul even though parts of their bodies may have fused. Surely, you are not proposing they become individuals only after the surgeons have successfully separated them! Surely, you don’t think these unfortunate siblings share only one soul? Granted one body may have ‘consumed’ the second and in that case the soul of the deceased has departed.

It is precisely here that your theory fails. Despite the appearance of a single organism we have two individuals souls infused in the same matter of grown dicephalus (two-headed) twins. Likewise, at the zygote stage we may have the appearance of one zygote or one organism. There may be intrinsic factors within it that have pre-programmed it for separation at a latter time along the continuum. Or there may be extrinsic environmental factors which have caused the separation of the early blastomeres. Science does not know what causes twinning.

What we do know however is that matter is animated by a soul. It doesn’t stand to reason to state that human life can maintain its stability without the soul for 14 to 56 days. Separated from the soul the body disintegrates. As St. Thomas taught it is not the body which contains the soul but rather that the soul is the container of the body. Contain as used in this context derives from the Latin verb conteneo, ere which literally translates to mean to hold together.

As Catherina and Jennifer have already posted you cannot prove a human person is not there after the first few hours of fertilization. Granted you have established the doubt about how many may be there but that is all the more reason not to interfere with nascent human life. One is no less culpable after he has destroyed by fire two or three human beings because he thought there was only one person home at the time. Whenever there is a doubt of human existence the moral principle is to safeguard the lives of all human persons. Therefore, regardless of when God ensouls human beings, at the moment of fertilization, or latter after asexual reproduction as is the case with twinning, one cannot attack human life either surgically or chemically.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Voco Pro Tatiano, Yes, I share your fascination with conjoined twins. However, it is erroneous to assume a single boundary determines the number or individuals present.

I do not make such a claim. Read my postings carefully and understand that you might be allocating different meanings to words that I am using.
The organism boundary does not define the number of individuals present, nor the number of persons, nor the number of souls.
The organism boundary contains the biological machinery which is alive. There is only one organism, which may entail two or more persons. These persons are individuals, and each have their own soul, but these individuals share, at least in part, one body, hence there is only one life, which is shared.

Both of the persons have their own soul even though parts of their bodies may have fused. Surely, you are not proposing they become individuals only after the surgeons have successfully separated them! Surely, you don’t think these unfortunate siblings share only one soul? Granted one body may have ‘consumed’ the second and in that case the soul of the deceased has departed.

No! read my words carefully. I have defined the words carefully.
I said clearly that the life is shared, but that the individuals are intact. I was very careful to explain that the surgeon is performing a mechanical operation to separate the bodies, without disrupting individual function. He is not creating a life, he is just changing a jointly shared life into an independently shared life.
While the life is jointly shared, an illness affecting one of the twins will also affect the other. when life is independently shared, this is not the case.

It is precisely here that your theory fails. Despite the appearance of a single organism we have two individuals souls infused in the same matter of grown dicephalus (two-headed) twins.

Again, you hasten to missread my words. I made it clear that I was talking of one body and two individuals. That was the principle of the argument.

Likewise, at the zygote stage we may have the appearance of one zygote or one organism. There may be intrinsic factors within it that have pre-programmed it for separation at a latter time along the continuum. Or there may be extrinsic environmental factors which have caused the separation of the early blastomeres. Science does not know what causes twinning.

End of part one…

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Part two

What we do know however is that matter is animated by a soul. It doesn’t stand to reason to state that human life can maintain its stability without the soul for 14 to 56 days. Separated from the soul the body disintegrates. As St. Thomas taught it is not the body which contains the soul but rather that the soul is the container of the body. Contain as used in this context derives from the Latin verb conteneo, ere which literally translates to mean to hold together.

As Catherina and Jennifer have already posted you cannot prove a human person is not there after the first few hours of fertilization.

I believe the word ‘person’ is here being misused. It is my understanding that this word is intended to be understood in the legal sense of a person being a human being who has been born. Hence I use the word ‘individual’ which I believe better describes the entity you call a person.
What an individual presents is an entity which is by semantic definition, indivisible. It presents as something, if not akin to the soul, at least having similar characteristics.
Coupling a human soul to an individual gives a one to one match. Trying to couple an indivisible, and immergible human soul to an embryo which has the potential to divide, presents great difficulties.
That the sperm are living is beyond doubt, as is the ovum living.Thus according to your own argument, they both must be animated by, shall we say, micro-souls, such as animate microbes. Now these micro-souls can fission, as microbe multiply by fission.
I am not much advised on the subject of souls.
Science considers them to be part of an archaic science, and like the luminiferous ether, doubts their existence.
Hence I discuss these only as a matter of philosophy.
Physical science is of no help, only the science of logic can be applied to philosophy.
Now does the micro-soul develop into a human soul, or is it replaced thereby at some appropriate time.
Is this what we mean by ensoulment.

Granted you have established the doubt about how many may be there but that is all the more reason not to interfere with nascent human life. One is no less culpable after he has destroyed by fire two or three human beings because he thought there was only one person home at the time. Whenever there is a doubt of human existence the moral principle is to safeguard the lives of all human persons. Therefore, regardless of when God ensouls human beings, at the moment of fertilization, or latter after asexual reproduction as is the case with twinning, one cannot attack human life either surgically or chemically.

I have already stated that though the killing of a very early embryo is not seen legally as murder, nevertheless, an embryo which still has the potential of fission, is by that very potential, of more value than one which has lost that potential.
Destruction of a pre-window embryo is more destructive to life than destruction of a post-window embryo.

 

[catharina]

Age is counted from birth, not conception, even for identical siblings, which by definition share the same conception, so are identically aged.

Not everywhere - since Chinese for thousands of years have counted newborn babies as one year old at birth - recognizing that an awful lot of growth went on prior to the births.

 

[JimG]

Not everywhere - since Chinese for thousands of years have counted newborn babies as one year old at birth - recognizing that an awful lot of growth went on prior to the births.

Yes, I recall someone telling me this once, that children in some societies were considered one year old at birth. They knew that they just didn’t suddenly become humans while coming from their mother’s womb.

 

[Rosalinda]

Voco Pro Tatiano, As you have already pointed out our problem is one of language. I don’t know how we are ever going to arrive at a more complete understanding of one another’s position on the issue of personhood if you continue to use incorrect scientific terms which are clearly established. Ronan O’Rahilly, a human embryologist Dr. Dianne Irving references frequently, helped to develop the classical stages of human embryology. Please, take careful note of what he said about the use of the term “ovum”.

[sign]The term "ovum" implies that polar body 2 has been given off, which event is usually delayed until the oocyte has been penetrated by a spermatozoon (i.e., has been fertilized). Hence a human ovum does not [really] exist. Moreover the term has been used for such disparate structures as an oocyte and a three-week embryo, and therefore should be discarded, as *a fortiori *should “egg”.[/sign]

Hopefully this contribution will start to clean out some of the misused words on this thread which are contributing to the confusion.

 

[AgnosTheist]

its the mind that makes a person, not the dna.

 

[catharina]

God, Who gave us both religion (faith) and reason, inspires the following teaching in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"II. “BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE”
362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit: Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day.

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not “produced” by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people “wholly”, with “spirit and soul and body” kept sound and blameless at the Lord’s coming. The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul. “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.

368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one’s being, where the person decides for or against God."

Footnotes available in original text.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Voco Pro Tatiano, As you have already pointed out our problem is one of language. I don’t know how we are ever going to arrive at a more complete understanding of one another’s position on the issue of personhood if you continue to use incorrect scientific terms which are clearly established. Ronan O’Rahilly, a human embryologist Dr. Dianne Irving references frequently, helped to develop the classical stages of human embryology. Please, take careful note of what he said about the use of the term “ovum”.

[sign]The term "ovum" implies that polar body 2 has been given off, which event is usually delayed until the oocyte has been penetrated by a spermatozoon (i.e., has been fertilized). Hence a human ovum does not [really] exist. Moreover the term has been used for such disparate structures as an oocyte and a three-week embryo, and therefore should be discarded, as *a fortiori *should “egg”.[/sign]

Hopefully this contribution will start to clean out some of the misused words on this thread which are contributing to the confusion.

Collins ENGLISH Dictionary:
ovum oh-vum] *n, pl **ova *** unfertilized egg cell.

Being as you might say, English, I tend to use the English language as the ENGLISH do.
I do understand that there are several provincial, and colonial dialects, but the ENGLISH ENGLISH is definitive.
However, being human I am capable of error from time to time.

 

[AgnosTheist]

^ catharina,

what does any of that have to do with defining a ‘person’?

 

[catharina]

^ catharina,

what does any of that have to do with defining a ‘person’?

At least as much as your pronouncements -
and perhaps you should take it to meditation.

 

[AgnosTheist]

At least as much as your pronouncements -

let me clarify then. the idea that its the mind that makes a person can be best understood through webster’s definition#5:

webster.com/dictionary/person
*Main Entry: per·son

5: the personality of a human being : self*
the personality, the self itself, is the mind is it not?

Now how does your religious postings relate to the definition of ‘person’?

 

[mlchance]

let me clarify then. the idea that its the mind that makes a person can be best understood through webster’s definition#5:

At best, you advance a circular argument. Merriam-Webster’s first definition, the most commonly used one, is “HUMAN : INDIVIDUAL”. Why skip that one in favor of number 5?

– Mark L. Chance.

 

[AgnosTheist]

At best, you advance a circular argument. Merriam-Webster’s first definition, the most commonly used one, is “HUMAN : INDIVIDUAL”. Why skip that one in favor of number 5?

– Mark L. Chance.

i was simply taking a shortcut to detail. if you look up ‘individual’ it will lead you to ‘individuality’ and then ‘personality’. same thing as #5. try it.

 

[mlchance]

i was simply taking a shortcut to detail. if you look up ‘individual’ it will lead you to ‘individuality’ and then ‘personality’. same thing as #5. try it.

But again you’re selectively reading the text. The most basic definition of “person” is “human.” Perhaps I’m simply obtuse? Does actually looking to the dictionary to attempt to solve a scientific and/or philosophical question lead anywhere worthwhile?

As has been stated frequently in this thread: Let’s grant for the sake of argument that prior to Time X, a developing human embryo isn’t a person. The question then becomes, “When is Time X?” No one can ever answer this question with anything other than this or that arbitrary standard.

Thus, it is perfectly reasonable to state, “No one really knows when Time X is; therefore, no one really knows when the developing human embryo moves from being a non-person to a person. This being the case, it is extremely imprudent to support abortion since doing means one always runs the risk of killing a person, regardless of at what point during gestation the abortion is performed.”

A prudent desire to not unknowingly kill a person is sufficent to argue against abortion’s permissibility.

– Mark L. Chance.