A nice cartoon, by Kukuxumusu, that maybe some people should see, especially after the last happenings in the stem cells research area… You can get a T-Shirt like that here.

Well, I have a habit of bringing up the “we’re just a bunch of atoms anyway” line, as you know from a previous post.

I guess I’m just trying to say that if a strictly materialistic theory of the universe (including us) were correct, then what worth do we have? That question may not make any sense in a materialistic world anyway, but I can’t reconcile that with the idea of free will, and the human intellect. It just seems pointless to argue for or against embryonic stem cell research, for example, if we’re just a bunch of particles interacting according to the Standard Model. Off topic, I guess.

Anyway, I stand behind the first paragraph I wrote in my previous comment, #24. I just think that such a thing describes a new human life. I can’t be convinced otherwise, and probably neither can many people holding the opposite view.

Man, I have to proofread a paper before submitting it. And I have to pack. The folks at CV sure know how to push my buttons and give me an outlet for procrastination. Gotta cutback.

In a work perhaps written in the fourteenth century ascribed to Thomas Acquinas titled _De essentiis essentiarum_ (On the Essences of Essences) Thomas refers to the homunculus as a proof that a female seed could not contribute to human generation. He said that man and sun generate a man, but that the womb’s role can be considered two ways: it either acts naturally when it preserves the semen and supplies it with a natural heat that stimulates its growth, but when it nourishes the semen with menstrual blood, it behaves artificially, like an agriculturalist when he fertilizes a field. Thomas used this reasoning to conclude that the mother contributes nothing to the essence of the child, but only provides a sort of incubator and nourishment.

When others argued the opposite, Thomas responded that empirical proof from the laboratory (for this ‘evidence’ he used the work by ninth-century Arab physician and alchemist Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi) showed that semen of a man kept in a clean vessel under the heat of dung for thirty days generated a man, but that such a man will not have a ‘rational soul’, because he is not from the union of a male and female, but that such a man will have a ’sensitive soul’, instead.

So then Thomas evaded the morality issue by asserting that the homunculus has only a sensitive rather than a rational soul, and therefore can be classified as subhuman and fit for research purposes. In his work: _On Being and Essence_ he said that the rational soul is produced by special creation at the moment when the organism is sufficiently developed to receive it. In the first stage of embryonic development, the vital principle has merely vegetative powers; then a sensitive soul comes into being, formed from the evolving potencies of the organism — *later yet*, this is replaced by the perfect rational soul [2]. In other words, in this medieval man’s view, the soul did not start at conception but started some considerable time afterwards.

Thomas’ view in the fourteenth century was an enormous step forward for the Catholic Church, and the accepted truth for a long time afterwards. So then if one wishes today to be a good Catholic, how to reconcile the view of the ‘modern’ Church that a fully rational soul is infused into the embryo at the first moment of its existence?

This ironic connundrum was not lost on some Italian media journalists in the May and June 2005 discussions of the failed Italian assisted reproductive technology Referendum, since one of the four points on which the Italians were voting was _at conception_ ‘Rights given to a human embryo under the law’. This is the reason I have in my notes historical notes about Aquinas. Unfortunately, even though most Italians are not ‘good’ Catholics, the public’s technophobias and the Vatican’s large-scale mass public relations media and undemocratic voting strategies (urging the Italians to not vote), resulted in the shockingly low 25% voter turnout and the Referendum didn’t pass and Berlusconi’s 2003 gift to the Vatican, the present draconic assisted reproductive technology laws stayed. The good thing about the new EU news is that Prodi is favorable to stem stell research and helped Italy retract their EU objection, which means that maybe the ART laws will have less bite now too. Maybe.

[1] _Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature_ Nonfiction. By William R. Newman. University of Chicago Press, 2004, page 188-189.

[2] http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/aquinas-esse.html Medieval Sourcebook: Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence (DE ENTE Et ESSENTIA)

By the way, attacking your polemical opponents on the theory that they believe that “we’re just a bunch of atoms” is rather silly. Of couse we’re a bunch of atoms. What we’re made of isn’t obviously the important dimension, any more than knowing that a poem is made out of sounds or letters tells you a great deal about it as a work of art. The funny thing about your rhetoric is that it is actually rather materialistic since you imply (I guess?) that the soul is itself a substance, albiet a special, ghostly kind of substance. To use an old Aristotelian way of talking, you seem to be looking for a material cause, rather than a final, formal, or efficient one. You may think you’re a thing. I think I’m a manner. Not a noun. An adverb.

“Another clear difference between embryos and human beings is that the latter do not need a host to survive. ”

True, that’s a difference between an embryo and a fully grown human. However, is this part of the definition of a human being? Couldn’t you say that it’s a human being who is not developed enough to survive outside the womb? All I’m saying is that the human embryo is a living and growing thing, with its own DNA, organising itself into something exhibiting the features we associate with a person. In the process, it develops more and more of the organs and parts it needs to some day function on its own outside the womb. If all goes well, it’ll develop into an adult who will reproduce, and the cycle starts over again. This leads me to conclue that the embryo is a human life.

Jim:

“Treating potential human beings as if they were the juridical equivalent of actual human beings has all kinds of bad consequences:”

True. Especially since potential human beings are NOT, by definition, actual human beings. But an embryo isn’t a potential human being.

“as I understand the position of the Catholic Church, for example, equillibrating potential and actual human life lies behind the prohibition on birth control, a rule that has had hugely negative consequences for actual human beings.”

Actually, you misunderstand the position of the Catholic Church. Surprise surprise. It’s silly to equilibrate potential and actual human life, as a potential human being is not an actual one. Here’s a pretty good article explaining the Church’s position. http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_04moraldifference.html

“Indeed, if you buy the church’s reasoning, the only moral thing to do is to fill every square inch of the planet with wretched people. The heck with that.”

Yeah, that follows.

“Of course this sort of reasoning assumes that what is precious in human existence is something that comes to be over a long process of development.”

So now there’s something “precious” in human existence? We’re just a bunch of atoms, right?. Nothing precious about that.

“The alternative notion that an immaterial essence or soul arrives at conception or, as the older theologians believed, quickening is one of those theological ideas immune to rational criticism.”

If you consult some Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, you’ll conclude that they were rational geniuses and that Aquinas’ writings on God, and humanity, are not in contradiction with reason, but are very rational writings, baby.

Doubtlessly, when a nation engages in the practice of “brain-draining”, this is a sure way for a nation to lose its empire status. Therefore -most ironically- this veto reflects the administration’s lackadaisical attitude towards protecting the U.S.’s empire status in the world.

If we recognize the priority of the actual, destroying a six-week old fetus is a far less morally serious act than killing a chicken, which, after all, is sentient. Of course this sort of reasoning assumes that what is precious in human existence is something that comes to be over a long process of development. The alternative notion that an immaterial essence or soul arrives at conception or, as the older theologians believed, quickening is one of those theological ideas immune to rational criticism. You can make fun of the Casper the Friendly Ghost version of psychology, but you can’t refute it and I won’t try.