What is 'human'?

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Well I don't object to abortion, but I do feel it's a heavy topic - Is that what you're driving at?



Well I wasn't trying to draft a law_ But if you insist, I will say 'the capacity for high-capacity conscious awareness that includes a range of feelings and preferences is what defines humanity'. Actually, this DOES dehumanise some1 with severe Alzheimer's or microcephaly (no1 else I can think of though), as most of their brains are missing; however, if I remove the phrase 'high-capacity', we have a possible definition of sentience that feels far more meaningful.



I was hoping some1 would argue that autistics in particular are non-human . Be my guest!

Autistics are not human

Actually a definition of sentience that covers all possible bases would be:

The awareness within which conscious mental experiences (preference/feelings etc.) occur

It could be assumed that this same sentience can be found in any organism with a brain except during sleep or severe illness. Any examples of creatures with organs that "aren't quite brains" would be welcome!

Autistics are sub-humans.

It is a related topic, and I would bet that NeantHumain is opposed to abortion, so I thought that using the matter of abortion as an attack on his view would be effective.


No, you weren't and I don't insist. I was posting in response to NeantHumain, and for the purpose of attempting to clarify. I think you were relatively clear though, at least for the purposes of most existing posters. It was also possible that some slight issues could exist if NeantHumain was having an AS-related interpretation issue, but I do think that NeantHumain was being uncharitable in interpreting you, but that is why I had to recognize that you weren't writing analytically in case that was the issue. By no means do I want you to be hyper-analytical, that is worse for conversation than being sloppy at times.


That would be interesting, but I would doubt anyone here would argue that position, there is usually too much common ground, only autistics who feel particularly isolated from the rest of humanity would likely take such a position. One could take such an argument, and my own framework allows for the possibility of such a position, but ultimately if I took an argument outside of my framework, I would have to argue against it, and I think I have a strong enough framework that arguing against it would seem painful to me. Possible, but such an argument would likely be a failure.

I'm gonna take some convincing, as I believed that until recently {Even before my diagnosis I saw myself as a subhuman monster }

Perhaps to make it simple: Member of the species "Homo Sapiens", the only known species of the Hominina, a subtribe of the Primates. Easily to distinguish from other primates by the structure of the 21th chromosome, a lack of fur and a oversized brain.

That's all.

Ok, and I think this kind of response was dealt with when dealing with NeantHumain who gave about the same response. The issue being that a biological question wouldn't be the question asked, because the biological question lacks context for it to be something other than stupidly simple and thus pointless to give. If it were the biological question then the matter would be really be about taxonomy, but it is really about the traits we associate with "humanness", and this can be seen by the statements of the OP in the thread.

Let's try to describe our behaviour-patterns: They are gentle and brutal, altruistic and egoistic, foolish and reasonable, etc. All this patterns are also found with our close relatives, the chimpanzees and the bonobo. So what can be than described "human" in the opposite to "non-human", because otherwise the term "human" would be without any sense? So we must end up with the mere biological description of our species as the only parameter which separates us from our closed relatives.

:p <----- duuuuh

:p

We do have unique behavior patterns though, at least ones emergent from our higher intelligence and communication capacities, along with some that seem as if they could be odd quirks. Not only that, but the issue of essence or perceived essence is still something that cannot be captured by taxonomy, I mean, I suppose you can argue that the taxonomic definition is the only possible one for humanity, but I think a number of people have dissented from this, and the logical possibility of arguing that autistics are inhuman under the standards of this question seems to indicate that the taxonomic definition is considered wanting, and others are more desired.

What is "human?"

What does it mean to be human?

INSUFFICIENT PARAMATERS

Let me make it clear that I don't have any problem with the possibility that there is no 'human' and only 'animal'. It just strikes me as a lazy, sloppy argument to just assume that there are no phenotypic distinctions to match the genotypic distinction between humans and other species. Rather than looking for (and failing to find) some magic bullet that makes us distinct, a more sensible approach would be to agree on a group of characteristics that define 'human', each of which taken separately would a) not necessarily be exclusive of all other species, and b) not necessarily be inclusive of all humans on a literal level - An elephant born without a trunk is still an elephant and not a rhino, even though elephants are characterised mainly by their long trunks!

All literal definitions are tautologies - They confirm merely themselves, in isolation from reality. So, if some of the brothers and sisters here (yea, man! - couldn't resist) object on the grounds that "they're human too" to being mistreated, maybe they should question whether they're communicating that which others may assume them to be communicating. In other words, if one only accepts a strictly genetic definition of humanity, then the word "human" cannot carry moral weight. A better argument would then be: "We're sentient too".

In another thread I was told that no1 on WP would argue that auties and NTs have nothing in common on a personal level. Since the genotypic classification of 'human', by definition, does not of itself have meaning on what ppl normally see as 'a personal level', it seems that some of the replies on this thread have argued just that. The description of ape behaviour quoted above, for example, might exclude some autistics.

Again, none of this is problematic, and it could be argued that no species can be defined phenotypically in any way. It merely means that the goalposts need shifting. We need to appeal to sentience, which in the ethics of animal rights and so on is extended to refer to the common capacity of sentient creatures to suffer, and their common desire to feel positive. If NTs ask for a reason not to mistreat us, this is it!

On the other hand, this argument would still allow us to be kept as pets or as beasts of burden if every1 were to accept it