Talk:Beginning of human personhood

Proposing a Complete Rewrite

Hello. Before I get started, though I do not have an account here, I promise I will do my best to respond in a timely fashion to any replies to my proposal.

I propose, based on reading this article, that this article be completely rewritten and/or restructured from top to bottom. My reasons for proposing this are due to the poor structure of the article and the lack of information on the subject presented in the article.

Allow me to clarify.

First, the structure for the article lacks direction. Having a consistent, proper layout is obviously important to how an article conveys information, but this article's structure seems to be disorganized. At the top, it delves into a discussion on fertilization, which should imply that the article will be broken up based on the various schools of thought on when personhood begins, and fertilization is certainly a logical place to start. However, the article then jumps to a "Philosophical and religious perspectives" section after going over various religious and philosophical perspectives and the history of those perspectives in the "Fertilization" section. To add, the article doesn't clearly break up the discussion in the "Philosophical and religious perspectives" section. It simply provides a historical introduction before jumping into some early philosopher's perspectives on the subject and then going on to name the perspectives of some, but not all, of the major religions. By the way, nearly all the perspectives are in favor of life beginning at fertilization, which is odd given that not all religions and philosophies back this perspective, though more on that later. Afterwards, the article proceeds to discuss the concept of personhood in law, but it only does so for part of that section. After talking about the Ecclesiastical Courts and English Common Law, it then continues, in that same section, to discuss other possible points in a pregnancy when various groups and individuals think personhood begins, all of which are religious, scientific, and political in nature with none of them providing legal arguments or justifications for their views on the concept of personhood. Granted, they get their own subsections which aids in readability compared to the previous section, but their overarching section is still "Personhood in Law" which is not consistent with their title or subject matter. Following the "Personhood in Law" section, the article covers "Other markers" of personhood which only includes one subsection after listing four perspectives, three of which were already covered under "Personhood in Law" and one which isn't covered anywhere in this article, merely stating "See [Immanuel] Kant" with a link to Kant's Wikipedia page which doesn't mention his view on when personhood begins at all. Lastly, the article briefly goes through ethical perspectives, which only covers the consequentialist perspective and not the deontological perspective (which obviously would be the time to mention Kant's perspective), and then, the articles circles back to legal perspectives. This time the article does what most other "Legal Perspective" sections on Wikipedia do and covers relevant court cases, though only for Ireland and the US, which is fine. However, one has to ask why this section is here and not in the "Personhood in Law" section. Therefore, it's clear the structure of this article has decayed significantly over its lifespan. Thus, at the minimum, the "Other markers" sections needs to include all but the "Ecclesiastical courts" and "Common law" subsections (Common law should probably also be renamed to English Common law) from the "Personhood in Law" section with the "Legal Perspectives" section being moved to their place. In addition, the "Ethical perspectives" section needs to be combined with the "Philosophical and Religious Perspectives" section, and the "Fertilization" section needs to be combined with the "Other markers" section, with "Other markers" being changed to just “Stages of Pregnancy” or something of that nature, to fully encompass all the points where varying groups believe personhood begins.

Secondly, the lack of information in these sections is also quite apparent. For starters, there is little background information provided, or at least references to where to find said information, on this subject, the process of human reproduction, or views and perspectives on Life itself. In order for a constructive debate to blossom, a proper bedrock of knowledge needs to be established. Thus, the lack of a “Background” section is quite unsettling given the importance of that information to the debate. One should not expect this article to cover everything in depth, but one would expect at least a purely factual section, or links to factual sections, that merely presents all the facts that will be used during the discussion. Such a section could also aid the organization of information presented in the article with much of the historical context and information being placed there. Continuing on, several perspectives in the "Philosophical and religious perspectives section are left out. Christianity’s perspective is reduced to the views of the Roman Catholic church and the “Early Church (It's unclear what is meant by this) in spite of the fact that those are not the only sects/views of Christianity much less the only perspectives on this issue, with the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian church being two examples of sects that reject the Catholic view entirely. To add, Islam and Buddhism, despite being two of the six major religions in the world, are not mentioned at all despite the inclusion of Judiaism, Hinduism, and even Janism, with most but not all in Islam viewing Personhood as starting at 4 months after conception and Buddhism not having a clear consensus at all. In addition to the lack of religious perspectives, the philosophical perspectives are also missing a major perspective: the deontological perspective. Despite the aforementioned note to “See Kant”, Kant’s views, much less those of other idealists or deontologists, are not mentioned or discussed at all in the philosopher’s section, which would cover a sizable chunk of the moral and ethical portions of Western philosophy. In addition, no eastern philosophies are mentioned here either. One could argue this is partially covered by the inclusion of Buddhism in here, but it would be disingenuous to say that it covered all Eastern philosophies. One can’t really cover the philosophical stance of when personhood begins without including how an entire half of the world views this issue. Lastly, but not least significantly, scientific perspectives are also lacking in this regard. Unlike other issues for debate in the eyes of public opinion, the consensus, or lack thereof, among scientists on this issue is absent as well as any other scientific views beyond those that discuss the possibility that life begins at fertilization. All of these missing perspectives severely degrade the quality of the discussion in the article since it narrows the list of opinions to consider on the subject, and it’s quite disturbing for anyone seeking an answer to this question who wants the clearest possible picture of all the perspectives on this issue.

All of these issues result in an article that is less than satisfactory by Wikipedia’s standards. Between the disorganization and the lack of information, the "Beginning of Personhood" article comes off as a good idea that was either not executed well, or was at least severely degraded with each passing edit. However, the article’s necessity still exists which is why I don't think it should be deleted. Upon researching this subject, there weren’t many articles that combined so much information on the subject in one place; there wasn’t a trusted “guide” to introduce one to all the complexities of this subject or the varying views on it. Several people will probably seek out this article in an attempt to answer this question in their mind, especially with the ongoing and heightening abortion debate in the United States. Thus, the importance of this article’s existence is crucial. The question of human personhood is central to that debate as well as other philosophical debates about consciousness, personhood, humanism, and posthumanism, among many others. However, that’s why the integrity and content of this article matter which is why I am making this proposal in the first place. I know I went on a bit of a tangent here, but I wanted to sufficiently explain my proposed edits and my position given I was requesting that an entire article be completely rewritten as an unknown and anonymous user. To summarize my edit proposals for the article’s rewrite, here is a list of all the issues I feel need to be addressed:

1. The "Other markers" section needs all but the "Ecclesiastical courts" and "Common law" subsections from the "Personhood in Law" section.

2. The "Legal Perspectives" section needs to be combined with the "Personhood in Law" section.

3. The "Ethical perspectives" section needs to be combined with the "Philosophical and Religious Perspectives" section.

4. The "Fertilization" section needs to be combined with the "Other markers" section, with “Stages of Pregnancy” or something of that nature being the new section title.

5. A “Background” section needs to be created to hold some of the information as well.

6. Buddihism and Islam need to be added to the "Philosophical and Religious Perspectives" section.

7. A more comprehensive and thorough picture of all of the varying, contradictory views of the major religion's sects needs to be included as well.

8. The deontological perspective needs to be added to the "Philosophical and Religious Perspectives" section as well as the position of Eastern Philosophers.

9. The scientific consensus, or other scientific perspectives if one is not available, needs to be provided.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy proposal. Once again, I will do my best to respond to any comments or questions on my proposal, and I hope that at least some lasting, positive changes come from this. To add, if you don't want to address me as an Anonymous user, my last name, Rose, will suffice.

Thank you, and have a nice day!

Rose

User:Unknown 23:06, 9 March 2022 (CST)

References

Reference to the Cathecism of the Catholic Church is blatantly wrong

"2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception."

But you say "birth" 2603:9000:63F0:87F0:4805:8BD1:CCD2:944A (talk) 03:53, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I made the correction 72.31.49.202 (talk) 19:06, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Had to fix again, who is putting it back? 2607:FEA8:3BA4:6200:B4DC:5D16:B36D:3190 (talk) 10:52, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Sadly this does not work. God forgive who evidently changes and obscures the Truth. 2607:FEA8:3BA4:6200:B4DC:5D16:B36D:3190 (talk) 11:01, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

I am trying again with explanation. I apologize because I just realized that this was my fault for not including the explanation. Gabarca2 (talk) 04:19, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

What about Gastrulation

I was reading an interesting article, When ‘‘Personhood’’ Begins in the Embryo: Avoiding a Syllabus of Errors by Gilbert, and he talks about a view that gastrulation's the beginning of personhood, since after that the gastrula can't divide itself to make more individuals. I think that could be added there. Sciking (talk) 19:37, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

As best I can tell, that's what the section that was titled "Segmentation" was meant to address. I've changed the title of that section and added a quote from a different Gilbert article as an introduction to the "Biological markers" section. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:34, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

when life begins vs. when personhood begins

This article is about the beginning of personhood, yet a lot of the text focuses on when "life begins" rather than when personhood begins. For example, in the fertilization section, the words "person" and "personhood" don't appear even once.

I think it's a mistake to conflate when life begins and when personhood begins; for example, a zygote is clearly alive, but that doesn't imply that it's a person.

Related, biologist PZ Myers notes in his blog that life is continuous: "What do you mean by “life begins”? Was there some step between your parents and you where there was a dead cell? Life is continuous — there hasn’t been a transition from non-life to life for about 4 billion years. So, yes, I’d agree that the zygote is a living cell, but so were the sperm and egg that fused to generate it..." [1] Yes, I know that it's a blog; it's still WP:RS for his view, and for a published view that's similar, see the Barresi and Gilbert quote [2], "The metabolic view takes the stance that a single developmental moment marking the beginning of human life does not exist. Both the sperm and egg cells should individually be considered to be units of life in the same respect as any other single or multicellular organism. Thus, neither the union of two gametes nor any developmental point thereafter should be designated as the beginning of new life."

Distinguishing the question of when personhood begins from when life begins would mean a major rewrite of the Biological Markers section. Interaction on this talk page is only sporadic, but I'd like to put this out there for discussion. At the very least, I think there needs to be some discussion of the view that one need not equate when "life begins" and when "personhood" begins. FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:26, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

You are right; "personhood" is a contrived legal concept where human societies have decided to give "rights" to some living humans at certain stages of development, whereas "life" is defined scientifically. Both have gray areas (is a virus alive?).

I support a rewrite of the Biological Markers section as you suggest. It would require more careful wording of "X religion defines fertilization as the beginning of human personhood", because (you are right) lots of religions try to falsely claim that they are defining "life" rather than the societal construct of "personhood". And then religions go on to conflate the two: "Thou shalt not kill" clearly only refers to humans, not to animals, plants, and microorganisms. ---Avatar317^(talk) 19:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Avatar317, I've been thinking about this as I've edited the page, but I haven't come up with a good solution. Right now, the page has separate sections for philosophical/religious views and for legal perspectives. The existing discussion of biological views brings religious or legal issues into the discussion in a couple of places, but my sense of the overall article organization is that the goal is to keep them separate. Also, I'm a bit wary of adding legal stuff into the biological section, as my knowledge of the legal end is only from U.S. law, not from an international perspective; as it is, the section that I added on whether the question is a biological one draws on responses to a U.S. congressional bill. I did add a brief note in the lede that "life begins," "human being" and "personhood (begins)" need not mean the same thing, but I haven't been able to find as good a discussion of this as I'd like. I'll keep hunting. The Senate testimony in response to the Human Life Bill is quite long (over 900 pages) and has a lot of useful statements, but I'm wary of using it too much, since it's a primary source. FactOrOpinion (talk) 00:56, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

when life begins vs. when personhood begins vs. legal person

I think there is a distinction w.r.t. legal personhood. As I understand it, a legal person (or entity) is someone, real or artificial, who has a legal right to be a party in court: to sue or be sued, for example. So a corporation is a legal person, and there is a river in NZ that is a legal person (https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/yes-you-read-right-the-river-that-s-officially-recognised-as-a-legal-person-20240209-p5f3q7.html).

So if a foetus is given legal personhood, someone can act or be appointed as guardian or for them to sue etc.

This is quite different from the regulatory of what trimesters abortions are allowed etc. The regulations may be informed by scientific/religious/ethical considerations that include the general idea of philosophical personhood, of course. What may be considered a person philosophically (and so not to be aborted) may still not be recognized as a legal person. And even if a legal person, that does not necessarily mean they shall not be aborted; similarly to how, in some countries, criminals even if mentally incompetent may be killed by the state despite them being legal persons.

So if the article is re-written, it might be good to make this distinction clear. Rick Jelliffe (talk) 02:22, 2 September 2024 (UTC)