Are newborns the property of their parents?

[grosz]

Hi

About two months ago, an unregistered user posted a message on the Ben Gurion University students' web site. He called out to all "caring" students and urged them to protest by not showing up on the first day of the spring semester.

Protest against what, you ask? Well, against the scandalous "increase in the price of bread."

I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world, but here in Israel the price of bread and several other food products are artifically fixed by the government. The reason is obvious: every man has a RIGHT to (reasonably priced) bread.

But I digress.

A friend of mine immediately responded, saying that bread did not grow on trees, and that since bread could not be baked by throwing communist poetry and socialist mantras into the oven, it had to be BOUGHT and paid for with money; if price controls made bread baking unprofitable, then bakeries would stop producing it. Bread baking had indeed become unprofitable here, because the price of wheat flour (also controlled by the government) was increased 14% a year ago.

So an increase of the price of bread was inevitable.

My friend's response attracted many a socialist and irrationalist, and they all took part in what has grown to a 13-page philosophical debate (I use that word in the loosest sense because the discussion was mainly a flame war, abundant in logical fallacies, incosistencies and self contradictions - not on our part of course...), going through all levels and subfields of philosophy.

In the process my friend and I, advocating the Objectivist position, have weeded out all the non-thinkers, and are now left with one Buddhist who thinks "all property is an illusion," but is willing to listen and to argue, even logically to an extent I might add. (There is also a socialist who likes to add a bit of white noise occasionaly, but he is all but ignored - in a most condescending, pleasing way nah, I am kidding)

My friend likes formalism, so everything is clearly defined, and every proposition is proved.

We have hit a brick wall trying to define "ownership." My friend defined ownership as a mathematical object, a binary relation between man and an entity.

The Buddhist, testing our consistency, asked "under this definition, what makes it an impossibility of a man to be owned by another?"

The Objectivist Front's reply was that adistinction is made between men who are capable of rational thought and infants who only have the potential to become rational, which means they are not men, and can therefore be considered property of their parents (who created them).

The Buddhist asked what was the difference between an irrational infant and an irrational 50 year old man, and, using an equivocation, proceeded to conclude that according to us, since socialists were irrational, they could be considered property.

So basically the question is: can a human being, specifically newborn infants who are incapable of rationality, be the property of another? What is the Objectivist position regarding babies?

If I understand correctly, the concept of 'right' comes from viewing man as a rational being whose consciousness is volitional, and is only applicable in the context of men.

This means that if a baby turns out to be incapable of rationality, perhaps because of brain damage, he has no 'right' to life, or any 'rights' at all for that matter.

Your thoughts on the matter are appreciated.

- Ori

[stephen_speicher]

The Objectivist Front's reply was that adistinction is made between men who are capable of rational thought and infants who only have the potential to become rational, which means they are not men, and can therefore be considered property of their parents (who created them).

I do not know who the "Objectivist Front" is, but their view most certainly does not represent the Objectivist philosophy that I know. No human being can be rightfully considered the property of another; a child has the very same fundamental rights as any other human being. The essential difference, in this regard, between a child and an adult is that the child is not fully able to exercise all of his rights, so the parent acts as a guardian of those rights for the child. The same idea of guardianship would apply to an adult who was so incapacitated as to not be able to reasonably exercise his rights. The notion of any human as property, whether infant or otherwise, is quite foreign to Objectivist principles.

[Bearster]

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

A brain-dead 50 yr old should not be considered a man at all. A man is not the animal with two arms and two legs, nor the animal with 26 chromosomes.

A man is the rational animal.

[oldsalt]

Bearster: Does this mean that you advocate euthanasia? If so, who decides? By what standard?

[Richard_Halley]

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

You are, saying that potential for being a human being instills you with the same rights as actually being one.

I disagree.

[DavidV]

Care to enlighten us as to why you disagree?

An infant is a human being when he is born. He is not rational at that point, but has rights because he is a living being capable of becoming rational. A vegetable on the other hand, is not. Likewise, sleeping and passing out does not make one non-rational, and neither does the fact that very few people are consistently rational.

[y_feldblum]

A baby, from the moment of birth (I'm guessing), is actively acquiring the human method of cognition and the human means of survival.

[rainoffire]

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

A brain-dead 50 yr old should not be considered a man at all.  A man is not the animal with two arms and two legs, nor the animal with 26 chromosomes.

A man is the rational animal.

The potential is not the actual and as such cannot be granted the same rights.

Existence is identity. Something exists as something. An object which exists cannot have two identities. Something cannot be A and B.

A is A.

I have the potential rights of a corpse; should I be granted them?

A 1 month old fetus has the potential to be an adult, should it be granted the rights of one?

Coal has the potential to be a diamond on a ring; would you propose with it?

This is why I disagree.

[Richard_Halley]

Firstly, I think an infant is a rational being. Perhaps it is not rational in the same sense as an adult is, but it has a conceptual faculty at birth. Would you agree with that?

Dealing more directly with the topic at hand, I disagree because I see no reason why something which is not rational may be considered a human being. So, I ask you:

By what moral basis may you say that something which may become rational is to be given any rights, and indeed rights on an equal level to that which is rational? Basically, for what reasons do you ascribe rights to something which has the potential to be a human being? What seperates a fetus from an infant, by this standard?

Perhaps you are merely putting the words, "has the potential to develop into a rational being," where I put the words, "has a conceptual faculty," but intending the same meaning. If so, than I suggust you change your wording to mine (or something similar to it). Yours implys that anything which may eventually become rational (examples: sperm, egg, fetus, etc...) has rights. If not, than I implore you to answer the above questions, at which point I will be happy to tell you why I disagree (assuming I still do disagree).

[Betsy]

All human beings have rights.

The reason lower animals don't have rights is because they are not human.

A fetus most definitely is human, but it doesn't have rights because it is not yet a being. As long as it is inside the mother's body and dependent on it, it does not exist separately as a separate entity.

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

Once a baby is born, it is a separate human being with all the rights an adult has but exercised on his behalf by his parent or guardian.

A brain-dead 50 yr old should not be considered a man at all.  A man is not the animal with two arms and two legs, nor the animal with 26 chromosomes.

Of course he is a man -- who is brain dead.

Assuming he was once a functioning human being, whatever provisions he made for his care when disabled must be honored. If he expressed a desire to be maintained in a vegetative state and left money for that purpose, his right to dispose of his property that way must be respected. This is the same principle by which people have the right to say how their bodies and property will be disposed of when they are dead.

(Also, human beings usually have 46 chromosomes).

[y_feldblum]

Richard_Halley, what exactly do you mean by "has a conceptual faculty"? (Information question.) Did Helen Keller, who before the incident at the pump functioned entirely at the perceptual level, have a conceptual faculty? Obviously, if not, and unlike animals, she still had the ability to acquire it. And continuing on that (to everybody), is the acquisition of a conceptual faculty the fundamental choice, or is a conceptual faculty presupposed by the concept choice?

[Yaniv]

Hello everyone,

I'm the one who started the debate on BGU forum, I`d like to present the full context in which the question "can a human being be owned" arises.

My basic claim is that ownership is an objective concept and it is not a "social agreement".

I've defined ownership in a way that derives from reality and thus is objective.

definition:

"Ownership" is a binary relation (i.e a relation between exactly two entities) between man and another entity:

any man M and entity E satisfy the relation if and only if M has produced E.

definition:

"Production" is transformation of matter by an intelligent being

the proposed definition set has two errors:

1. "man" is not defined.

2. man can be owned, since it has been produced my man.

since the set is already flawed, I have left out ownership over items aquired by trade, which requires a consistent definition set of ownership over items produced.

please propose a formal definition set that overcomes those flaws.

Also, does anyone know any work done to mathematically formalize objectivism?

[JRoberts]

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

I'd advise you to take caution in making statements like this Bearster. You can not let a potential take the place of what something actually is (I'm appealing here to your logic, not to the nature of the topic).

Furthermore-the infants rights stem from his nature. His nature is not seperated from him at birth and then he 'gains' it. He is born with it. He has rights because of who he IS, not who he CAN BE.

[stephen_speicher]

The infant has rights because he has the potential to develop into a rational being, i.e. a man.

A human embryo "has the potential to develop into a rational being," but Objectivism does not grant rights to the embryo. The embryo remains as property, but an infant has rights by virtue of becoming an independent human being.

A brain-dead 50 yr old should not be considered a man at all.

Brain death is a scientific (and legal) issue, not to be deduced rationalistically from philosophical principles. Philosophically we can say that man ceases to be man at death, but science, not philosophy determines that criteria. Irreversible loss of circulation and respiration was the prevailing standard for determining death before we developed neurological criteria, and likewise brain death as it is now constituted could cease to be the prevailing criteria. For instance, there are neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington's disease, which are associated with accumulated aggregates of a mutant form of protein which affects the striatal neurons in the brain. A recent finding showed that a wild-type Huntington protein up-regulates transcription of a brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and this factor produced by cortical neurons affects the survival the striatal neurons in the brain. Restoration of the wild-type Huntington protein, thereby increasing the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, may rejuvenate the affected neurons. This is just speculative, first to be tried for therapeutic treatment of Huntington's disease, but such speculation was at the base of neurological criteria supplanting the classical criteria for death when neurobiology was first born decades ago. Scientific issues are best left to science.

A man is not the animal with two arms and two legs, nor the animal with 26 chromosomes.

Man has 46 chromosomes.

[stephen_speicher]

please propose a formal definition set that overcomes those flaws.

Also, does anyone know any work done to mathematically formalize objectivism?

The flaws lie within your approach; Objectivism is a philosophy whose epistemological base is Aristotelian, not the symbolic logic of a Frege, Russell, Tarski, Kripke, etc. Predicate and multi-valued logics are antithetical to the Objectivist approach to philosophy.

[dondigitalia]

Firstly, I think an infant is a rational being.  Perhaps it is not rational in the same sense as an adult is, but it has a conceptual faculty at birth.  Would you agree with that?

An infant does not have a conceptual faculty at birth. An infant's method of cognition is on the perceptual level. An infant does not have a conceptual faculty until it is able to distinguish between and identify individual entities.

At birth, an infant feels hungry, tired, etc., but does not recognize the actual cause or remedy of these sensations. All infantile cognition is self-contained. As far as an infant is concerned, when it is hungry, it's own crying satisfies hunger. When the infant learns to recognize that crying is NOT actual food, rather the method used to obtain food, then there is a beginning of conceptual faculty. Conceptual cognition is further developed when the infant recognizes that the crying calls the mother, who is the source of food.

[DeeVee]

Each country, culture, relgion, state and individual makes attempts at defining who and what is a "man." Islam for example...goes one step farther and states that "woman are inferior to men, and are infact subhuman (Surah 4:31). Objectively....then should not science then determine who and what is a man..or a woman...and laws then define what each is under the laws of state....instead of relying on religion, philosophies, and history?

Dee Vee

Edited April 25, 2004 by GreedyCapitalist

[stephen_speicher]

An infant does not have a conceptual faculty at birth. An infant's method of cognition is on the perceptual level. An infant does not have a conceptual faculty until it is able to distinguish between and identify individual entities.

I think what you mean to say is that an infant does not exercise his conceptual faculty for some time. He does, however, possess such a faculty; the inherent ability to conceptualize is a part of his nature, his identity.

p.s. Because the picture is small, it is difficult for me to discern the cosmological scene of your avatar. What cosmological feature does it represent?

[MinorityOfOne]

Yaniv,

You seem to want to have a few axioms, a few definitions, and an entire philosophy that follows from them. That methodology is entirely incongruent with Objectivism. The Objectivist philosophy is reached inductively, by observation of reality, not through manipulation of a priori formulations. So in the sense I think you mean, no -- not only am I unaware of any attempts to "mathematicize" Objectivism, but I'm quite glad not to have heard of any. It would undercut everything Objectivism stands for.

The basic problem with your methodology is that you're effectively cutting concepts off from reality. I'm somewhat reluctant to give you specific examples, because it might just encourage you to try to simply modify what you've done rather than reconsidering the methodology... but I'll give one as illustration. If your focus were on the facts, rather than on the words, you wouldn't even think of putting forth a definition such as "production is transformation of matter by an intelligent being." Say I take a knife and tear the Mona Lisa into little shreds. Do I thereby own the Mona Lisa? When I walk in the woods, I transform the dirt: I squish bugs, I move pebbles, etc. Do I thereby own the path?

It's necessary to have definitions, but don't expect them to do the work for you. No matter how essentialized a definition you can find for production, ownership, etc., there will still be many non-defining traits which will be relevant to understanding property. Focus on the facts, not on the words.

[Richard_Halley]

Betsy:

Thanks, I see now.

Dondigitalia: An infant does have a conceptual faculty, as Stephen discribed.

And DeeVee: Philosophy must identify what criteria must be met by an existant in order for it to be considered human. Science may only work to identify what meets that criteria, not decide the criteria itself.

[source]

I believe that you've hit a brick wall because of a faulty definition of property. I've recently defined this term (when I was doing a research on property rights) like this:

"[Property is a] tangible or intangible posession, produced, or acquired from another by means of trade."

Applying pure logic without context here, you would end up hitting the same brick wall because, while human beings aren't produced, they can be acquired if they are already property of another. Applying context here, however, would be asking the question: "How could they become property?"

EVERY and I mean every human being has right to life.

"The right to life, and that which is required to sustain it. To pursue values and productive achievement as an individual sees fit for his own existence; as is determined by his own volition. To exist as an end in himself, not as an end to others." (definition by Charles M. Hildreth)

Right to life being defined as such, it is crystal clear why a human being cannot be considered property.

Hope this makes things clearer.

[Censure the Opposition]

...while human beings aren't produced...

...EVERY and I mean every human being has right to life...

...Right to life being defined as such, it is crystal clear why a human being cannot be considered property...

You'd have a hard time convincing me that humans aren't produced. There's a reason it's called re-PRODUCTION. You have a man and a woman who each offer input creating output. Sounds like production to me. I'm not offering an opinion on ownership or property there, but it's definetely production.

By your right to life logic, would a man convicted of murder one and receiving a death sentence become property? Obviously he is losing his right to live because he took away someone else's same right, but does he become property?

And Betsy, subhuman animals do have rights. If they didn't, I could come over and kill all your cats and all I'd receive would be a citation for destruction of property.

[Betsy]

And Betsy, subhuman animals do have rights.  If they didn't, I could come over and kill all your cats and all I'd receive would be a citation for destruction of property.

Considering the value of my pets to me, I would hope the penalty would be more severe than a mere "citation" but animals don't have rights and they are property.

Men have rights -- certain freedoms of action -- because their survival as rational beings requires freedom. Why would a non-conceptual creature have -- or need -- rights?

[dondigitalia]

p.s. Because the picture is small, it is difficult for me to discern the cosmological scene of your avatar. What cosmological feature does it represent?

It is the V838 Monocerotis Light Echo, taken as part of the Hubble Heritage Project March 4 of this year. You can see a full size image here. It's absolutely beautiful, as are most of the images captured by Hubble Heritage.

Some of my other favorite Hubble images are the Pillars of Creation, The Horsehead Nebula, Spiral Galaxy M64, and Whirlpool Galaxy M51. I'm pretty sure they can all be found on the Hubble Heritage site as well.

P.S. I recently (about 3 months ago) decided to return to school to study cosmology. The Hubble Program will be over by the time I'm done, but my ambition is to work with TNGST. *fingers crossed*

P.P.S. What's the one in your avatar?

[dondigitalia]

I think what you mean to say is that an infant does not exercise  his conceptual faculty for some time. He does, however, possess such a faculty; the inherent ability to conceptualize is a part of his nature, his identity.

What I meant was that it an infant's conceptual faculty is undeveloped and cannot be exercised for some time. Thanks for correcting me; my choice of words was poor.