Originally posted by no1marauder
They should be. You are again confusing the power to withhold rights (perhaps legitimately depending on the state's interest) with their non-existence. How much Locke did you actually read?

There's no confusion. I am pointing out to you, as I would have to him, that there is no practical difference between saying (a) you have a right that can be legitimately withheld until (e.g.) a certain age, and (b) you can legitimately be said to have acquired a right at (e.g.) a certain age.

So what is the philosophical reason for preferring (a) over (b)?

Originally posted by dottewell
There's no confusion. I am pointing out to you, as I would have to him, that there is no practical difference between saying (a) you have a right that can be legitimately withheld until (e.g.) a certain age, and (b) you can legitimately be said to have acquired a right at (e.g.) a certain age.

So what is the philosophical reason for preferring (a) over (b)?

As already stated:

It avoids the self-contradictory stance that you have "rights" the existence of which are wholly dependent on other's actions.

The link I gave provides a more practical reason: if children have no rights until maturity then parents can do whatever they want to them. And if they have some rights and not others due to the supposed differences in their "nature" then you are opening a whole other can of worms i.e. whether because all persons are somewhat different in their "nature" whether there is any "right" which is common to all.

Originally posted by no1marauder
As already stated:

It avoids the self-contradictory stance that you have "rights" the existence of which are wholly dependent on other's actions.

The link I gave provides a more practical reason: if children have no rights until maturity then parents can do whatever they want to them. And if they have some rights and not others due ...[text shortened]... mewhat different in their "nature" whether there is any "right" which is common to all.

They are no more "other-dependent" than the point at which an inchoate right can be exercised is "other-dependent".

This is simply to confuse a practical point (that we need to establish, as a society, a set age at which people can vote) with a moral point (that at a certain point a right is acquired, or an inchoate right can legitimately be exercised, whatever a particular society thinks). In other words, society sometimes makes (morally) bad rules.

Whoever said children have no rights until maturity? Certainly not me. So yes, we have to open that can of worms. And we will find we have good reason to say there are certain rights which are common to all (e.g. by virtue of the intrinisic value of human life, the capacity for and value of autonomy, and so on). But to say some rights vary according to our nature at (for example a particular stage in life) seems more consistent with the principle that we have rights as a consequence of our nature than to say all human beings always have all the same rights.

Originally posted by dottewell
They are no more "other-dependent" than the point at which an inchoate right can be exercised is "other-dependent".

This is simply to confuse a practical point (that we need to establish, as a society, a set age at which people can vote) with a moral point (that at a certain point a right is acquired, or an inchoate right can legitimately be exercised, ...[text shortened]... as a consequence of our nature than to say all human beings always have all the same rights.

You're missing the point as usual. Saying you don't have the right until society says so is fundamentally different from saying you have the right from birth but that society may regulate it IF there are important state interests. What don't you understand about this?

Originally posted by bbarr
No, for the last time. The capacity to suffer is important because it is a precondition for having interests. If there are no psychological states an entity would prefer; if nothing could go better or worse from its own point of view, then it could have no desires for alternate states of affairs and, hence, no interests. Being a creature that can have inter ...[text shortened]... felt "oomph" of ours, but they certainly suffice for meeting my criterion as specified above.

I'm sorry, but the capacity to suffer is not a precondition for having interests. A capacity for preferences is.

"Psychological states" is too vague -- an entity can have three kinds of preferences regarding its own states:

(a) Rational ones (e.g. I prefer working for company A over company B because A has a better health plan that increases my chances of surviving well into old age)
(b) Emotional ones (e.g. I prefer marrying A to B because B screams at me and makes me unhappy)
(c) Physical ones (e.g. I prefer holding the kettle by the handle rather than the base because the latter hurts)

Whether a creature has one or all three kinds of preferences, it seems clear to me that it does have interests. What we normally call "suffering" is (c) and (b). It's still not clear to me whether you would consider a sentient, rational being with purely rational preferences (i.e. (a)) a 'person'.

If you would, then clearly 'suffering' is not a necessary condition for personhood and must be dropped in lieu of 'preferences'. If you wouldn't, then I'd like to know why you think physical or emotional 'suffering' (or simply 'preference'😉 is crucial to personhood.

And I disagree with you completely about Data. But maybe such a debate is too "spiritual" for this forum.

A last point -- 'suffering' is normally an adverse state (that too severe). Would someone like 'Q' (from TNG) -- who clearly cannot suffer physically unless radically transformed, and who "suffers" emotionally only in so far as Picard ticks him off -- qualify as a 'person'?

Originally posted by bbarr
None of these cases are explained in sufficient detail. The short answer to your budget of cases is this: If they have the capacities, then they are persons.

The purpose of the questions is to clarify what you mean by "capacities". If you need specific additional information in one or more of those questions, please ask. AFAIR, our earlier discussions of capacities revolved around specific neurological structures (in humans) and I think I've provided sufficient information for that.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
I'm sorry, but the capacity to suffer is not a precondition for having interests. A capacity for preferences is.

"Psychological states" is too vague -- an entity can have three kinds of preferences regarding its own states:

(a) Rational ones (e.g. I prefer working for company A over company B because A has a better health plan that ...[text shortened]... lly only in so far as Picard ticks him off -- qualify as a 'person'?

I'm sorry, but the capacity to suffer is not a precondition for having interests. A capacity for preferences is.

What is it here that you don’t understand? I take the capacity to suffer to just be, at bottom, the capacity to have things go better or worse for one from one’s point of view; to be capable of having psychological states one finds adverse (whether this ‘finding’ is conceptually articulated or not). I’m not using the term as synonymous with something like ‘the capacity to feel pain’.

"Psychological states" is too vague -- an entity can have three kinds of preferences regarding its own states:

(a) Rational ones (e.g. I prefer working for company A over company B because A has a better health plan that increases my chances of surviving well into old age)
(b) Emotional ones (e.g. I prefer marrying A to B because B screams at me and makes me unhappy)
(c) Physical ones (e.g. I prefer holding the kettle by the handle rather than the base because the latter hurts)

All of these preferences are rational and in each case the preferences specified are prudential. What you’ve done is simply point out that people can preferences for different types of things, not that these are different types of preferences. My preference for vanilla and yours for chocolate are not different types of states. My preference to be free from unhappiness and my preference to be free from being burned are not different types of states, but rather similar states with different objects (consider an analogy with belief , and the different propositions that beliefs can take as their objects).


Whether a creature has one or all three kinds of preferences, it seems clear to me that it does have interests. What we normally call "suffering" is (c) and (b). It's still not clear to me whether you would consider a sentient, rational being with purely rational preferences (i.e. (a)) a 'person'.

See above. If S can prefer, then S can suffer, but it is not necessarily the case that if S can suffer, then S can prefer.

If you would, then clearly 'suffering' is not a necessary condition for personhood and must be dropped in lieu of 'preferences'. If you wouldn't, then I'd like to know why you think physical or emotional 'suffering' (or simply 'preference'😉 is crucial to personhood.

No, because one can have adverse psychological states that aren’t preferences. Preferences are, like desires, propositional attitudes, and some creatures can suffer that do not have the capacity for holding propositional attitudes because they lack the concepts required to form the propositional content of such attitudes.

Without the capacity for things to go better or worse for an entity from its own point of view that entity can’t be harmed in any morally relevant sense (destroyed, sure, but not harmed, in the same way a rock or bacteria can be destroyed but not harmed).

And I disagree with you completely about Data. But maybe such a debate is too "spiritual" for this forum.

Fair enough, but blame the writers of TNG.

A last point -- 'suffering' is normally an adverse state (that too severe). Would someone like 'Q' (from TNG) -- who clearly cannot suffer physically unless radically transformed, and who "suffers" emotionally only in so far as Picard ticks him off -- qualify as a 'person'?

Yes, clearly.

Originally posted by bbarr
'Nomological' and 'Mereological' are technical terms in philosophy, LH.

'Nomological' relates to the actual, phyiscal laws of the universe. So, to say that some event is nomologically possible means that the physical laws of the universe do not preclude that event. So, there may be some events that are logically possible but nomologically impossible, bu es can certainly inhere (if anything can actually inhere) in merelogical sums.

'Nomological' and 'Mereological' are technical terms in philosophy, LH.

So is 'potency', Bennett. Quid pro quo. But thanks for the definitions.

Does the converse relation hold?

Not necessarily. Potency relates the states or modes of being a particular being can be in at different points of time. It is essentially a mechanism for describing how a particular being can change over time and still be "underneath" the same being it was before.

(I suppose this means that my answer to your conditional "fill the blanks" question might have to be revised -- I'll need to think about it)

There is no reason to think that merelogical sums can't be substantial in any philosophically interesting sense.

Based on the definition you provided, complex substances are also mereological sums -- therefore mereological sums can be substantial. However, would every mereological sum be substantial in a philosophically interesting sense? I would dispute that.

Suppose I had two solid boxes apart on a table. Hopefully you wont dispute that the two boxes, taken individually, are substances. Now you claim that one can just conceptually create a new object that is the sum of the two boxes and, since properties inhere in it, it can be a substance.

But what properties inhere in such a mereological sum? The mass of the new sum is just the sum of the individual masses. The centre of mass of the new sum is just a vector average of their individual centre of masses. If the two boxes are of the same colour, then the colour of the new object is just that common colour; if not then this property is undefined.

Indeed, I would ask what property can you think of that wouldn't merely be a sum (or average, or common feature etc.) of the parts of this "object" taken individually? In such a case, it would not be philosophically interesting to call it a "substance".

EDIT: This reminds me of Spinoza's definition (cited by BdN) on an earlier page.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
The purpose of the questions is to clarify what you mean by "capacities". If you need specific additional information in one or more of those questions, please ask. AFAIR, our earlier discussions of capacities revolved around specific neurological structures (in humans) and I think I've provided sufficient information for that.

Well, since none of your examples indicated the type or extent of the actual neural damage, it would be impossible to tell from them whether the hypothetical victims were still persons. It seemed to me from the examples that you were conflating questions concerning whether some V was a person with questions concerning when we would be justified in treating some V as a person. It also seemed to me that you were conflating questions concerning whether some V was a person with questions concerning whether some V was the same person after an accident as s/he was before (isn't this what the examples about the psychological continuity of the V was getting at?).

Edit: It's late and I have to sleep. I'll write more later today. Good night, LH.

Originally posted by no1marauder
You're missing the point as usual. Saying you don't have the right until society says so is fundamentally different from saying you have the right from birth but that society may regulate it IF there are important state interests. What don't you understand about this?

You keep saying that but, for example in the case of voting age, the difference between the position I stated and yours is of no practical difference whatsoever.

It's you who are missing the point; I am not saying that you don't have (certain) rights until society says so. I am saying that you acquire (certain) rights with age. Whether society recognises that it a different issue entirely. (Although hopefully an enlightened society will do so.)

Originally posted by bbarr
[b]I'm sorry, but the capacity to suffer is not a precondition for having interests. A capacity for preferences is.

What is it here that you don’t understand? I take the capacity to suffer to just be, at bottom, the capacity to have things go better or worse for one from one’s point of view; to be capable of having psychological states one finds advers ...[text shortened]... Picard ticks him off -- qualify as a 'person'?[/b]

Yes, clearly.[/b]

I take the capacity to suffer to just be, at bottom,
(a) the capacity to have things go better or worse for one from one’s point of view;
(b) to be capable of having psychological states one finds adverse

(I've split the two formulas you've used in this thread to denote 'capacity for suffering' for easy reading.)

First note: (a) and (b) do not appear to be the same thing. If one assigned a numerical "score" to emotions/psychological states/whatever, (a) seems to say that, for any two states x and y that are possible for the creature, the creature can identify/recognise/feel/find x > y. (b) seems to say that, for a possible state x, the creature can identify/recognise/feel/find if x is negative.

Second note: What do you mean by "point of view" and "psychological state"? Do you imply some kind of 'mind'? Can a non-sentient creature have either? Does a dog have either a "point of view" or a "psychological state"? A hamster? A frog? A fish?

Third note: Suppose we had a sentient, rational being that did not have negative psychological states (e.g. one could think of an extremely hopeless optimist) but can nevertheless differentiate between different levels of positive states. Would such a being have the 'capacity to suffer'? Would it be a person?

All of these preferences are rational and in each case the preferences specified are prudential.

Granted, they are rational expressions or verbalisations of preferences. However, I would dispute that there are not different kinds of preferences at work here. By 'preference', I don't mean the vocalised form of the choice (i.e. I don't mean a propositional attitude), but the (basis of the) behavioural choice itself.

Unlike belief, the three stimuli operate at different levels of the "psyche" (for want of a better word at the moment). (c) is the kind of preference most living organisms would normally exhibit. (b) requires some kind of complex emotional states. (a) requires an intellect.

Originally posted by bbarr
Well, since none of your examples indicated the type or extent of the actual neural damage, it would be impossible to tell from them whether the hypothetical victims were still persons. It seemed to me from the examples that you were conflating questions concerning whether some V was a person with questions concerning when we would be justified in treating so ...[text shortened]... at?).

Edit: It's late and I have to sleep. I'll write more later today. Good night, LH.

I did wonder why you were up so late. 🙂

(1) clearly states that there is no physical damage. One way of looking at it would be to think of, say, an android whose "brain" is shut off while its battery is recharging (1a).

(2) and (3) state that there is physical damage, but I don't see why the "extent" of physical damage is relevant. It's quite clear that, in his/her/its current state, X is incapable of reason, sentience, suffering(?) etc. It's also clear that in both cases the damage is not irreversible/irreparable. What difference does it make whether, for instance, the surgeon (in (2)) has to "transplant" a control centre for the brain from another creature or simply tie together disconnected neurons?

I wasn't conflating anything -- my questions were merely whether in the current state X is a person or not (and re: psychological continuity, I am not concerned at the moment whether the person pre- and post-recovery are the same person -- just whether what's lying there on the hospital bed is a person).

But, since you mention it, I am curious as to what conditions would justify treating a non-person as a person.

Originally posted by dottewell
You keep saying that but, for example in the case of voting age, the difference between the position I stated and yours is of no practical difference whatsoever.

Actually it is. If the State were to lower the voting age to 11 (say) tomorrow, then the scenario would be quite different between no1's view and yours.

Originally posted by lucifershammer

So is 'potency', Bennett. Quid pro quo. But thanks for the definitions.

Right, and so is ‘substance’, pace your response to No1. Look, this exploration is being conducted at a pretty high level, so you shouldn’t hold it against folks that they may not be familiar with philosophical terms of art like ‘substance’ (terms with roughly as many meanings as there are philosophers).

Not necessarily. Potency relates the states or modes of being a particular being can be in at different points of time. It is essentially a mechanism for describing how a particular being can change over time and still be "underneath" the same being it was before.

Right, so some early fetus lacking mentality is both in act that fetus, in potency a slightly older fetus also lacking mentality, in potency an adult with normal psychology, and in potency a corpse. One wonders why, regarding the moral status of the fetus, we ought to privilege one sort of thing the fetus is in potency.

(I suppose this means that my answer to your conditional "fill the blanks" question might have to be revised -- I'll need to think about it)

O.K., fair enough. So far you have claimed that it is necessary for X’s being in potency Y that X is becoming Y, but that becoming Y is not sufficient for X’s being in potency Y. What else, do you think, has to be added to the account of ‘in potency’?

Also, you seem to be claiming that it is constitutive of personhood in act that an entity has an intellect and will. How sophisticated does a creature’s intellect have to be to qualify? How sophisticated does the will have to be?

Based on the definition you provided, complex substances are also mereological sums -- therefore mereological sums can be substantial. However, would every mereological sum be substantial in a philosophically interesting sense? I would dispute that.

Dispute away.

Suppose I had two solid boxes apart on a table. Hopefully you wont dispute that the two boxes, taken individually, are substances. Now you claim that one can just conceptually create a new object that is the sum of the two boxes and, since properties inhere in it, it can be a substance.

I’m not conceptually creating anything, I’m pointing out that the mereological sums of the boxes is itself a distinct substantial object. Suppose you glued the boxes together, would they then be substantial in a more philosophically interesting sense? What if you were to bind their surfaces together in some other way? Do these brute physical manipulations of the boxes fundamentally change their metaphysical status?

But what properties inhere in such a mereological sum?

The same properties that inhere in their constituents, roughly. There will be some different part/whole relational properties, and some different modal properties, but our relational and modal properties change through time and this doesn’t worry you in the slightest. Further, every object that has parts is a mereological sum of those parts. Why on earth should the respective distance of an object’s parts matter as far as the metaphysical nature of the whole object is concerned?

The mass of the new sum is just the sum of the individual masses. The centre of mass of the new sum is just a vector average of their individual centre of masses. If the two boxes are of the same colour, then the colour of the new object is just that common colour; if not then this property is undefined.

Yes, so what?

Indeed, I would ask what property can you think of that wouldn't merely be a sum (or average, or common feature etc.) of the parts of this "object" taken individually? In such a case, it would not be philosophically interesting to call it a "substance".

I’m not claiming that it is more or less philosophically interesting to call mereological sums ‘substantial’. I’m claiming that they are just as substantial as their constituents, and hence that discounting mereological sums as proper bearers of the property ‘being in potency’ is arbitrary and stipulative.

I take the capacity to suffer to just be, at bottom,
(a) the capacity to have things go better or worse for one from one’s point of view;
(b) to be capable of having psychological states one finds adverse

First note: (a) and (b) do not appear to be the same thing. If one assigned a numerical "score" to emotions/psychological states/whatever, (a) seems to say that, for any two states x and y that are possible for the creature, the creature can identify/recognise/feel/find x > y. (b) seems to say that, for a possible state x, the creature can identify/recognise/feel/find if x is negative.

(a) doesn’t say that at all. Your reading of (a) presupposes that in order for something to go better or worse from an entity’s point of view it is necessary that that entity be able to represent alternate states of affairs to itself, and that would require the possession and deployment of concepts. This, again, I explicitly deny. Something may go better or worse for an entity from its point of view even though the entity cannot conceptualize some alternate state of affairs that would be better or worse.

(b) doesn’t say that at all. There may be marginal cases where lack of attention, confusion, damage, etc. prevent us from determining whether things are going better or worse for us from our point of view.

Second note: What do you mean by "point of view" and "psychological state"? Do you imply some kind of 'mind'? Can a non-sentient creature have either? Does a dog have either a "point of view" or a "psychological state"? A hamster? A frog? A fish?

If S has a point of view, then there is something it is like “from the inside” to be S. A psychological state is a mental state of an organism, some of which are conscious and some of which are not. It is necessary for this that S be sentient, but not necessary that S be sapient. Normal adult mammals have points of view. I don’t know enough about non-mammalian neurophysiology to tell if there is good reason to believe that they have points of view. Nobody thinks that single cells, bacteria, viruses or plants have points of view or psychological states.

Third note: Suppose we had a sentient, rational being that did not have negative psychological states (e.g. one could think of an extremely hopeless optimist) but can nevertheless differentiate between different levels of positive states. Would such a being have the 'capacity to suffer'? Would it be a person?

If the entity prefers to be in more positive states, then my view entails that that entity has the capacity to suffer. Is the entity in question self-conscious?

Granted, they are rational expressions or verbalisations of preferences. However, I would dispute that there are not different kinds of preferences at work here. By 'preference', I don't mean the vocalised form of the choice (i.e. I don't mean a propositional attitude), but the (basis of the) behavioural choice itself.

Whether a propositional attitude is vocalized is immaterial. Propositional attitudes are just that: attitudes (belief, desire, fear, etc.) that P, for any P. Preferences are propositional attitudes just like beliefs are. Different preferences will be for different things, and different preferences may motivate people in different ways (depending on a host of psychological and situational factors).

Unlike belief, the three stimuli operate at different levels of the "psyche" (for want of a better word at the moment). (c) is the kind of preference most living organisms would normally exhibit. (b) requires some kind of complex emotional states. (a) requires an intellect.

No, most living organisms don’t have concepts, and hence aren’t capable of preferences at all, even about burning stoves. Sure, I grant that the three preferences at issue each require different concepts and (perhaps) different cognitive abilities. But so what? Professional logicians believe certain theorems of logic that other people can’t believe because they can’t understand them (i.e., the propositional contents of the theorems can’t be represented by many folk, and hence can’t be constitutive of a mental representation they stand in an attitudinal relation towards). This certainly doesn't entail that the beliefs of the logician are a different sort of state than then beliefs of the layman.

Originally posted by lucifershammer
Actually it is. If the State were to lower the voting age to 11 (say) tomorrow, then the scenario would be quite different between no1's view and yours.

How so?

On the view I put forward, one would say the state had made a mistake by attributing rights that have not yet been acquired. No1, I suspect, would say the state had made a mistake by failing to recognise the right should remain "inchoate" until a later age.

The arguments one would put forward to get the decision reversed would be pretty much identical. How strong those arguments were would (hopefully) determine the outcome. Similarly, the arguments one would put forward to lower the voting age to (say) 16 would be virtually identical regardless of which position you took (children are mature enough at 16 to understand the political system, make informed choices, take responsibility for their actions, etc etc).