It is pretty clear to me that you cannot reasonably reach a concrete conclusion based on the evidence presented in that article. This is a scientific question which cannot be judged based on measured sound bites in the popular press. You cannot judge whether a person in a coma lacks a rational faculty from behavioral evidence, so I don’t know what your basis for such certainty is. But let’s move on to the bigger issue.
What I am proposing in my post is that, perhaps, it can be concluded that someone must have a linguistic faculty in order to have a rational faculty, since language is the medium of concepts. What I am assuming to be true is that the girl has no functioning linguistic faculty, because I believe I read that her brain stopped developing at 3 months (and thus her linguistic faculty stopped developing, i.e. it stopped functioning). So that’s the basis for my “certainty” (which is what I was trying to make clear with the rest of my post).
I’ll start by objecting that “communicate” is a bit vague, and quasi-socialist (huh??). Have I communicated my point to you? Perhaps you have in mind a particular definition of “communication” which doesn’t involve a relationship between two or more beings. I think I’d like that definition to include some notion of “intention”, so that male plants do not “communicate” with female plants, and a cheetah being accidentally uncovered while stalking it’s prey doesn’t constitute “communication” by the cheetah.
I was just trying to point out that if a given mentally handicapped person cannot speak (or “communicate”), they probably do not have a linguistic faculty, and thus probably do not have a rational faculty, if my little theory turns out to be true. Of course, in lots of cases people cannot speak or even communicate at all, but they do have linguistic faculties. So, that’s just a guess, not an objective evaluation of whether or not someone has a linguistic/rational faculty. What I meant by “practical” was “snap-judgement guess that is likely accurate in context”, which is a misuse of practical. But I wasn’t trying to make a philosophical point here at all, I just said that as an offhanded prelude to the objective criteria I was looking for–whether or not someone can use language.
I think the best bet is to consider the issue in terms of language, but even then I don’t think that solves the problem. Now finally, when you’re considering this from a practical point of view, there are huge problems in stating laws (which protect rights) if you were to say, for example, that a being which has does not have language and which has not already been claimed and put to productive use by others can be claimed as property.The problem I see here seems to stem from conflation of the actual and the potential. Let’s take a normal human child, which is born without language and therefore born without concepts. The child will learn a language, but how? One aspect of the rational faculty is the capacity to form concepts, by reasoning. If you declare that a child has no rational faculty until it has learned language (at least the basics), by what means does the child learn language? In addition, by reducing rationality to having language (and tying rights directly to the rational faculty), you are saying that infants below a year and some old have no rights. This may well be what you are saying, but I need to know whether that’s your position.
An infant has a rational faculty and a linguistic faculty, both in developmental stages, from what I understand. They cannot exercise either of them qua rational faculty/linguistic faculty. So, in my thinking, infants - and even children to a certain point - don’t have rights. If I have a misconception of the source of rights, let me know, but as I’ve stated before, I think political rights are defined and implemented selfishly, by rational men, and there’s no reason for them to apply to entities which are not rational, i.e. infants. Infants should be considered property of whoever takes care of them first (usually, the parents) until the child is old enough to have its own rights–just as unused land is the property of whoever uses it first, and keeps using it (i.e. does not abandon it). People establish who has power of attorney over them in case they lose their ability to make choices–such as if they go into a coma. Then the person becomes, for all intents and purposes, the “property” of the person with power of attorney.
And finally, you run the risk of elevating the self-evidently false to the status of an axiom (self evident to those who know these facts, which are not totally thick on the ground). Namely, many people lead reasonable lives without language. Before the advent of sign languages about 300 years ago, deaf people usually had no language (even now this is common in backwards places), and there are functioning aphasics who have lost their language but can still lead okay lives. By your definition, these people would be indistinguishable from cows, and could be taken as property. I can’t argue that your definition is self-contradictory, but at least it does lead to what I think is an absurd result.
My understanding is that someone who doesn’t learn language can’t think. I’ve heard of a girl who was kept in a closet and completely isolated until she was 16 or something like that, and I’ve heard that she was essentially retarded–which I understand to mean, in this case, lacking rational faculty, as opposed to just not having some minimum IQ. My supposition is that if someone is completely deaf (and has always been deaf, and has not been exposed to writing) and they are able to think, they’re able to use concepts, and have their own functioning “language” to handle them. I understand that people can lose some aspects of language and still think - aphasics, for example. If someone can lose all of their language and they can still exercise their rational faculty, then the idea that I’m suggesting, which was hinted at in the passage I quoted but not said exlicitly, is wrong - the idea that a linguistic faculty is necessary for forming concepts and thus having a functioning rational faculty. I’m sure you can clear some of this up. 
The “rational faculty” is a higher abstraction, which has a number of aspects. Concepts are a very important aspect and language is important for concepts, but that’s not all there is to rationality. For one thing, sentences are not concepts but a vast amount of human cognition is based on combining concepts into sentences.
In my view, having a rational faculty is all or nothing. You have a working rational faculty–or you don’t have one, or you have one that doesn’t completely work, either of which would make you irrational. So what I’m wondering is simply, can you have a rational faculty without having a linguistic faculty? (In either case, I mean either developmental or completely developed.)
And apart from language issues, rights have to do with the fact that man has volition, that his actions are not pre-determined and automatic.Remember that we’re seeking an objective principle, one that any person can grasp and follow without having highly specialized training or buying assumptions that they don’t accept. One example of the problem of stating rights in terms of rationality is that some people (I’ll omit measurement) hold that Platonists and Kantians are irrational, from which it follows that they could be shot on sight (hmmmm, I don’t know if that’s a good result or a bad one); your definition of rational would make babies possible food crops; a definition of “rational” might, at the hands of the tree-hugger animal-rights fascists, include all animals. But the referent of “man” is not problematic.
To me, what has rights is a “man,” defined as a “rational animal,” which means “an animal having a functioning rational faculty,”–regardless of whether he chooses to be rational or irrational. So a Kantian gets rights, but a person who is retarded (actually missing requisite brain parts, not simply of low IQ) or an animal doesn’t. To me, the referent of “man” is not problematic–with the understanding that a person without a rational faculty is a broken man (a broken unit), and doesn’t get rights.
That’s an interesting juxtaposition. Does the part “counts in some respects” do this for you? That is, a partial lack of rational faculty is sufficient, so a man’s rights stem from having a complete and fully functional rational faculty? And therefore, if you don’t have a complete and fully functional rational faculty, then you have no rights?
I agree with all of this (it is what I meant), except for your first sentence. By “counts in some respects” I was just being sloppy; I was trying to say “qualifies” (the girl qualifies as a man without rational faculty); the “in some respects” just meant that while she qualifies in this context, I don’t think she’s a man in the having-a-penis sense. :worry:
(Let me clarify one legal point, so that you don’t stick your foot in the bear trap. “Pleading insanity” refers to a variety of not-guilty plea, and “pleading” means “arguing”. Our legal system is based on the premise that an objective body will consider all of the evidence and reach a conclusion that may or may not lead to a punishment. You are basically saying that arguing insanity and losing the argument should be an additional crime, which is a corruption of how rational legal systems work. If you are acquitted of a crime based on the insanity defense, you may still lose your rights, depending on the technical question whether or not the person is still dangerous and poses a threat to society).
I’m not saying that arguing insanity and losing the argument would be an additional crime - just that you’d lose your rights if you were to win the argument. Because having rights is based on having a functioning rational faculty, and presumably, someone who is insane does not have that. Someone who simply chooses not to exercise their rational faculty–this counts for all criminals, really–doesn’t have an excuse, and they get punished for whatever they’ve done. By the way, I’ve changed my mind that the state should just put away someone who has successfully pleaded insanity; as with the person who goes into a coma, the preson who is insane should be under the purview of whoever has power of attorney over them. But that person should be required to put the insane person in an asylum or something if they are dangerous, just as very dangerous dogs must be kept in kennels.
By the way, since you started pointing out the holes in my boat (i.e. the absurd results), I’ll stop holding off on doing the same for you.
The basic principle should be this: act in whatever manner best advances the child’s life.
So parents have some duty to take care of children? This particular entity has a positive right to be fed, to be cared for, etc., no matter how much of a sacrifice this is to the parents? Even if it isn’t in their self-interest–for example, if they don’t want the child? (You may very well answer “yes” to this. I think we may have conflicting views on the “rights” of children, and so forth. It’s a complicated topic, which you’ve probably thought through more thoroughly than me - which also is probably true for mostly everything I’ve said in this post - which is why I’m looking forward to your response )