cbo@utai.UUCP (Calvin Bruce Ostrum) (08/26/84)
From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) | All I think that you have done here is illustrate the difficulty of treating | two aspects of humanity (moral and biological) separately. Is it really | possible to do this? Isn't our humanity more composite than that? The | crux of the matter seems to be in the apparent distinction you are making | between "members of the species Homo Sapiens" and a "human being". What | is the basis of that distinction? Are we not both at the same time? Good grief! It's been over a year since I read any of this stuff and still some of us haven't figured it out. A careful and accurate explanation from Paul Torek seems to slip right by Paul Dubuc, as indicated by the above reply. Let's try again. The "two aspects of humanity" mentioned above *are* separate. Fallimg under a particular biological classification is not in itself a morally relevant property entitling one to moral consideration. Before such a classification can be used to hand out moral status some sort of argument should be given to establish a link. The question is not "what is the basis of that distinction?", but "what is the basis for believing the two classes to be coextensive?". I don't believe they are, but before much real headway can be made, we must come up with a better morally relevant description of the class "human being" as Paul names it; perhaps "person" or "moral agent" would be better names as they don't carry the connotations of arbitrary species membership that "human being" does. It's frankly quite upsetting that Paul says "aren't we both at the same time?". Sure we may be, but isn't it possible that there are other beings who are only one, the morally important one, and who are getting a terribly unfair deal in it all? -- Calvin Bruce Ostrum, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science uucp: { utzoo linus ihnp4 floyd allegra uw-beaver ubc-vision cornell watmath hcr decwrl }!utcsrgv!utai!cbo