I dream of giant squirrels.

[i_am_the_owl]

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Main:
How many components can one remove from a human being and still have them be a person? It's pretty safe to say that an individual who has lost their hand is still a person, and beyond that, not 95% of a person, but a person. Thus a human is not simply a sum of their parts or they could be more easily quantified. Even without lungs, a

Comments

[stars_in_return]

I misread your last sentence at first, and thought you said "answers" instead of "alters". So are you asking what it means physically to be a person, taking all you said into consideration?

It's hard to answer that, thinking of components separately. But I don't know if I understand the question. I think of physically being a person simply as having been born human. Once you're born (or conceived?), you're a person until you're dead. So, vegetables are people.

And when people talk a moral or immoral thing like abortion, they get into whether conception matters or not, and if the beating of the heart is what makes a fetus human, brain growth, consciousness, etc. That's where it becomes confusing for me, because I see being a person simple as physically alive or dead. As soon as a woman is pregnant, a new life is on the way into life.

[i_am_the_owl]

That's one way of interpreting the questions, yes.

Of course if you're born a person then you're a person. Origin has nothing to do with the question. That is, if someone is born whole and then later loses aspects to their physical being, what can they lose while still remaining a person?

This has nothing to do with ethics, morality, or abortion. And even if it did, and even if it's human, it is still a parasitic existence.

[stars_in_return]

A movie I saw in anthropology class showed a society living in a rainforest. They were burying alive a woman who had mono. She couldn't communicate, so she was dead to them.

It doesn't have anything to do with ethics, sometimes it helps me to put things into a certain context. What do you mean when you say "parasitic existence"?

A mad scientist making a Frankenstein has dissembled people into parts. If the parts aren't working together to make a person, then you just have parts. Environmental factors. Modern technology can keep you alive when you should have been dead. There are parts you can survive without, and parts that are essential to survive. I think you most need your head and torso, because everything that works together is in there: Brain, heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, etc. But how long can one survive without arms and legs? That probably depends on if one can afford assisted living. So, head and torso, with limitations and less of a chance.

[i_am_the_owl]

Dead to them, but dead? No. I'm not interested in a given culture's standards as they have no bearing. Also, communication is not a requisite to being a person (ie. vegetables).

Parasitic existence. It lives and feeds by leeching off the mother.

Iron lungs, heart transplants, et cetera. The entry poses the question about keeping the brain alive (they can't do brain transplants, so for as I know)..

[shoe_says_duck]

so I'm curious as to what you think the answer is Kyle. I tried thinking about it, and it makes my brain hurt, or perhaps that is only because its been in great use lately. Could it be a person is who they are? brains don't have personalities, neither do organs. But then again animals have personalities... hmmm... now i'm confused.

[i_am_the_owl]

What exactly does "a person is who they are" mean?

Don't brains have personalities? The personality of a person is stored in the frontal lobes of a brain, ergo if a brain could be isolated yet kept alive, it would have a personality.

Animals have personalities, but I didn't mean to necessarily exclude animals with the way I phrased the question. I'm just biased towards using humans as an example because I am one.

[ex_uncleflo]

Does a person, upon dying, cease to be a person?

[i_am_the_owl]

Don't they?

[bondage_siren]

They'd just be a dead person rather than a living one.

[i_am_the_owl]

So is Alexander the Great still a person despite the fact that any remnants of his body have decomposed, or is he a memory and historical figure?

Are mummies people or are they mummies?

[pharoah4187]

I think we're all missing the obvious point that Kyle has a brain in a jar.

As long as the brain has a dynamic personality, can grow, learn and experience emotion and physical sensation, yes it would be human. If it cannot ANY of the things listed above, it is not human. If it does some of them, but not others, then we can argue about it. This list may be incomplete, as it's a very impromptu post with little thought, but I think it offers a good starting point.

[pharoah4187]

edit: not human, but a person. Like I said, little or no thought.

[ex_uncleflo]

By what standards can you argue that such is the basis for the qualification of being human? What logic rests behind this statement?

[pharoah4187]

well, the edit to my post states that such a being would be a person. It covers everything that makes humans unique. As Kyle already pointed out, being simply a brain or simply a body doesn't make something a person, so the question was then, what makes a person if it isn't these two things? The answer is simple. It is a combination of the two. It is the body and the mind working in tandem. The list I provided are some of the qualities that I could come up with off the top of my head that would result from this interconnection.

Now that I actually sit and think about it, I would also add the ability to rationalize and think to the list.

[bondage_siren]

I think the brain makes a person a person, as you speculate, because of the things it can control and do. The brain can make you emote, eat, slap someone, etc..

Isolated, even if technically alive, it doesn't really serve a purpose. It has no function. So maybe it's function that makes a person a person. It makes sense, seeing as how there's debate about 'if a person is a vegetable, are they really alive?' sort of thing.

Also, if you took said brain and put it into any other living or nonliving thing, it would not make that thing a person.

[i_am_the_owl]

I dunno. I know plenty of people who I would say "serve no function".

If the brain is the "essence" of a person as you speculate, then why would it not make a person out of another thing?

[bondage_siren]

Well think about it. If someone put a human brain inside a lamp, would you then consider it a person? It wouldn't function as a person, and it probably wouldn't function as a lamp anymore either...

It'd just be a fucked up lamp.

Again, I think it's more the control the brain can have rather than the actual brain that makes the difference

[i_am_the_owl]

And if the brain retains its life, memory, and personality?