Dale, over at his Trinity Blog, criticizes much of the ‘relational’ ontology behind views of personhood that we’ve discussed here.

http://trinities.org/blog/archives/249

http://trinities.org/blog/archives/666

Interesting.

Those who DO posit the essential ‘relational’ nature of personhood ought to give some account of what happens to human beings (who are also ‘persons’ on our view) when they’re sleeping for example. And there’s a concern to know how social Trinitarians would criticize abortion (if human beings aren’t inherently ‘persons’). Same for the mentally retarded and comatose. On what grounds do we value human ‘being’ which is not inherently ‘personal’? I think Dale’s working with an entirely different understanding of ‘person’, but besides that, there’s no reason why those who see ‘personhoood’ as the goal of human being and not something the human being inherently is, can’t value what human being inherently is enough to oppose abortion. We just have to be clear on what that is.

Tom

Moral Seriousness in Science

Posted on March 14, 2009 by Halden

Pretty incisive article yesterday from an advocate of stem cell research:

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research — a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of “science” and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said “if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” Obama clearly has not.

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/15/2009 3:00:41 AM (GMT-5)

Really though?

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 9:02:51 AM (GMT-5)

I think I want to say that this immaterial 'soul' is more than merely a "record" or history of relating that will eventually be dethawed and reinstalled in a new body. I would want to affirm consciousness of the disembodied soul.

Post Edited (Corey) : 3/15/2009 9:31:24 AM (GMT-5)

From http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/stump/

Stump speculates about a natural dualism that is not an extreme Cartesian dualism - one that depends on a metaphysical mental substance - but one that is an emergent property at the system level. She argues that Aquinas' dualism, which takes the soul to be the form of the body, can accept the characterization of the mental as correlated with the physical because the mind is implemented in configurations of the physical.

Here's how I see it.  "Dwayne", "Tom" and "Corey" are personae that our individual "logoi" associate with as how we relate to our contexts.  Ask yourself does "Corey" really have any objective reality outside of what occurs in created time/space (land of biological hypostasis)?  Not really.  But the "logos" within you (which is directly related to Uncreated Christ the Logos of God) necessarily transcends that identification, even as it immanently SUPPORTS that very identification.  Tom had a good thought...

If we remember the biblical significance of “names” and “naming,” we might say that what the Book of Life contains (my take here) are the true identities, the logoi, of all possible beings. That special you, that true identity, that ‘all you can be’ in Christ, is what we’re measured by, so to speak, if the me that steps up matches the me that’s in the book, that is, if I am my logos, then the party begins. If not, it doesn’t. This is an easy way to avoid the idea that everybody’s actual, individual, given name (Tom, Corey, etc.) is actually known to God from the foundation of the world.

See what I'm saying?  (Man, I hope this isn't getting too far afield... )

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 10:06:14 AM (GMT-5)

D: But then again, maybe THAT's why Fr. Stephen uses "mere existence/authentic existence" instead of "sub-person/true person" (which would have been just as valid.)  It's less insulting.  I mean, who'd want to point at someone and say "Look, a sub-person!"

T: Or even, “Look, a potentially authentic existent!” In common parlance we take short cuts. Using ‘person’ for infants is fine with me. But if ever the conversation gets going and we have an opportunity to explain ourselves a bit, then you could unpack it a bit more. I think more people assume that infants are “fully authentic” in SOME sense of the world. They’re not all the can be. But they don’t want to say there aren’t authentic in any sense.

D: But then again, Christians have no problem talking descriptively about humans who are spiritually dead in their sins, dead while they yet live, and spiritually unavailable to God and unconnected to Christ.  Really don't see the difference from an "insult" perspective...but that's just me.

T: Well, try it. Walk down the street and call some random person a “subperson” and let me know if it works for ya. ;o)

D: But Tom...you WILL say that a human fetus is OBVIOUSLY not a human "self", right?

T: Right. I’m just talking about contextualization. Fit in with common parlance as far as is possible, and wait for the right opportunity to challenge and educate people when you can. That’s all.

------------------------

D: So what happens when a person has an accident and no longer has the brain activity necessary to sustain a true "self", being pretty much a step above a vegetable? Do they stop having a "soul"?

C: The soul, the particular immaterial form or configuration, continues to be known and sustained by God. That's the point of Stump's paper: "... without Reductionism."

D: This configuration of information of which you speak. Is this the CURRENT PERSONALITY that had been taken on by the ego activity of the mind/brain relational unity you are talking about? God "records" the persona to be placed back in the body at resurrection. Right?

C: Well, "configuration" is Stump's lingo. If I were to reformulate it to my concerns, I'd probably invoke something along the lines of SK's "relation that relates itself to itself", but I think the essential notion is conserved. There is a unique relation with a unique history of relating, that is known as a single individual before God. Now, while this relation can continue to exist without a body, that is not the natural intended state.

I think I want to say that this immaterial 'soul' is more than merely a "record" or history of relating that will eventually be dethawed and reinstalled in a new body. I would want to affirm consciousness of the disembodied soul.

Tom: There’s just so much we don’t know. It seems so mysterious to me. What REALLY is consciousness anyway? There’s no one agreed upon theory. We have the brute fact of experience which cannot be explained in materialistic terms alone. So we posit God. But ‘how’?

Corey: There is no pre-existing soul.

D: Ah, but there IS a pre-existent individual "logos" in you, me, and Tom that grounds all of our human becoming. It's basically God's "eschatological essence" for us...it is the ground of our very being that we can choose to work against.  How is that related to our "soul", which is not pre-existent?

Tom: It’s related as ‘purpose’ and ‘intention’ are related to ‘actual fulfillment’. I think you’ve got what seems like a substantialist idea of logoi in your mind. You think of logoi as substantial, discrete ‘things’ that actually DO things. But they’re just the intended perfections of created entities. They’re just ‘thoughts’ that God has about what we can be, what he calls us to be. The relation between these divine intentions for created entities and the created entities themselves is the presence of God’s sustaining word. That's how I see it. God continually speaks to created entities upholding them and extending the possibility of becomgin for the next moment. That 'word' is that thing's logos; just God standing in/with/under a created reality offering the possibility and directionality of becoming. The logoi define that direction.

D: Here's how I see it.  "Dwayne", "Tom" and "Corey" are personae that our individual "logoi" associate with as how we relate to our contexts.

Tom: Again, you’re seem to be thinking of logoi as entities that 'think' and 'choose'. You have them “associating” with our personae. That's not possible. Logoi are not 'beings'. They don’t DO anything. They have no powers of self-determination. They’re not persons (or beings as such). They just represent the shape and form of our becoming. Its’ WE who do the associating. WE associate our actual selves with the person we can be (our logos) or not. When we do this associating (= when we contemplate who we can be in Christ), our actual selves become conformed to the eternal pattern of our logoi. We become what God intended us to be.

D: Ask yourself does "Corey" really have any objective reality outside of what occurs in created time/space (land of biological hypostasis)? Not really. But the "logos" within you (which is directly related to Uncreated Christ the Logos of God) necessarily transcends that identification, even as it immanently SUPPORTS that very identification.

Tom: But our logoi aren’t detached forms cut loose from created contexts. In other words, they represent what we are to be AS CREATED entities IN CREATED CONTEXTS. Createdness is written into the logoi of created things. So Corey’s logos represents all Corey can be GIVEN COREY’S HISTORY and particular CONTEXT (as a father, husband, employee, etc.). The logoi of created things are logoi for the particular created circumstances in which we live. You seem to want them to be stripped down versions of a nameless ‘me’ floating around with no ties to concrete circumstances. But there is no fulfillment/actualization of a logos apart from concrete, named, conditioned circumstances. In other words, a human being can fulfill their logos as male or female, parent or not, etc., but there's no fulfilling it apart from one of those options. So while logoi don't demand any one particular form, but do require SOME particular form.

I don’t want to say that it’s part of my created logos to be named “Tom,” for my parents might have named me something else, or to be a father, for I might have had no children. But I also don’t want to strip the logoi of all the created, contingent environment in which they’re actualized in/by us. This is why I think we have to see the logoi in more general aesthetic terms (I'm not describing this well). They have to be something like that if they can be fulfilled by me in any of the contingent trajectories my life may take. See what I’m trying to say? They have to embrace a variety of possibilities. There's no actualizing them apart form such such context. So a variety of contexts has to be built into them. I may not have been a father, but surely my logoi, the perfect me God had in mind, has something to say about what kind of father I should be should I become a father, etc. See what I mean? I think you want to exclude such contingent realities from our logoi. I want to say there is no logos apart from SOME such contingently shaped form.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 3/15/2009 12:57:29 PM (GMT-5)

What I'm trying to highlight is this:  Your self-referential memory of self-experience being "Tom, husband, father, etc." is a self-understanding perspective that comes from the ego function of the your created, emergent "soul"  working on the historical embodied experience of your human mind/brain relational unity...and all of this is distinct from Christ-the-Logos' individual eternal "logos" that continually circumscribes the true you.  Yes, there's no actualization of your individual logos without your self-referential ego activity as "Tom".  At the same time, the true you goes BEYOND your self-referential ideation.  If that weren't the case, then the individual logos within you would be lost if you, God forbid, lost your self-understanding as "Tom" through some brain damage or something.

Post Edited (One Love) : 3/15/2009 1:59:45 PM (GMT-5)