And I have contended that the definition of considering humans equivalent to persons is insufficient, and that personhood should be based on traits such as self-awareness, rationality, and the capacity to feel pain. I have pointed out that animals possess greater levels of this trait than human fetuses.
The current definition is sufficient legally, ontologically and ethically.
I am a bit confused that you find the current definition 'insufficient' since it suggests to me that any conceptual development of the idea of person you are envisioning should serve to make it more universal.
You are ammending the definition specifically to exclude human beings of a certain stage of development and including animals. That is a step backwards from a universal ideal, fyi.
What is your objection to this definition?
I have tons of objection -- foremost of which stems from metaphysics.
The qualities you have provided, and on which you wish to base the concept of personhood are SUBJECTIVE qualities. How rational, self-aware or capable of feeling pain should one be to qualify as a person? Any answer to that question, if such a criteria can be infallibly discerned to begin with, is entirely ARBITRARY. And as far as the rights that accrue to a person are concerned -- THEY ARE INDEPENDENT OF POSITIVE LAW.
Next, they are qualities that are TRANSIENT. If the basis of personhood depends on qualities that change from one moment to the next, we have this absurd situation of someone slipping in and out of personhood.
Next, it disregards entirely a fetus' POTENTIAL to demonstrate these qualities. Anyone can say with a fair amount of certainty that, left with the processes that nature has imbued it, a fetus would be a fully functional human being, hence a person, in nine months (or thereabouts) after conception. Now, human actions are logically driven to some intended or potential end. If you suppose that the fetus is not a person, killing it would kill the person it would certainly become -- hence demonstrating the INTENT to kill.
Do you assume that I will immediately accept John Stuart Mill's claims as valid? Firstly, I am a preference utilitarian, not a classical utilitarian, so I differ substantially from Mill in that regard.
When you stated utilitarian standards, I simply assumed you were referring to that philosophy's most accomplished advocate. Although I cannot imagine how mutated your utilitarianism is from js mill's to be of any relevance -- as if utilitarianism, in general, was not twisted enough.
By all means, state the difference here.
I openly disagree with Mill's assertion. Has a human being been a pig, or has Socrates been a fool? How would they be familiar with the benefits of idle and simple pleasure if they had never had it themselves?
Im not sure if that is an entirely valid objection to diffentiate mill's utilitarianism with what I could only guess is yours.
Do you deny that people forgo the enjoyment of an immediate and lower form of happiness in lieu of the potential gain of something higher and and more lasting?
Then on what grounds do you differentiate between a worm or a snail and a human, since worms and snails have a similar imperative to continue their own existences?
The grounds on which ethics differentiate between a worm and a human is that a human posesses the capacity, either manifest or potential, to direct their own actions towards their own rational ends. And here I am not talking about any individual human being but humanity as a whole.
A fetus is not a rational being at that stage of its existence, so to include a fetus in your analysis, you would need to assert that it had some inherent value in and of itself.
I do assert it.
The value, as you rightly say, is INHERENT IN AND OF ITSELF. One cannot gain or loose it at any stage of one's existence. It is inseperable from it.
