“Is Richard Dawkins a ‘human’?”
Although it is becoming harder and harder to believe, the answer to this question is still ‘yes’. By definition, he’s human. This is a biological question of species. His is of human descent. He is also father to a human. His daughter is, not surprisingly, a human as well and has been since the day she was conceived.
“Is Richard Dawkins a ‘person’?”
This is not a scientific question; it is a question of value. ‘Persons’ have rights. ‘Persons’ deserve justice. If one can take away his status of ‘personhood,’ then Richard Dawkins has no right to justice. But it is immoral to take away those rights because he is a person and has been since the day he was conceived.
Although lexical distinctions can be made between the two, being a person is inviolably attached to being a human. No panel of judges, no matter how supreme, can actually remove Richard Dawkins’ personhood. They could not do it before he was born, and they cannot do it as he grows old and more crotchety.
These thoughts of mine are distilled from these thoughts of the political philosopher George Parkin Grant:
However ‘liberal’ [the Roe v. Wade] decision may seem at the surface, it raises a cup of poison to the lips of liberalism. The poison is presented in the unthought ontology. In negating the right to existence for foetuses of less than six months, the judge has to say what such fetuses are not. They are not persons. But whatever else may be said of mothers and foetuses, it cannot be denied that they are of the same species. Pregnant women do not give birth to cats. Also it is a fact the the foetus is not merely a part of the mother because it is genetically unique ‘ab initio’. In adjudicating for the right of the mother to choose whether another member of her species lives or dies, the judge is required to make an ontological distinction between members of the same species. The mother is a person; the foetus is not. In deciding what is due in justice to beings of the same species, he bases such differing dueness on ontology. By calling the distinction ontological I mean simply that the knowledge which the judge has about mothers and fetuses is not scientific. To call certain beings ‘persons’ is not a scientific statement. But once ontological affirmation is made the basis for denying the most elementary right of traditional justice to members of our species, ontological questioning cannot be silenced at this point. Because such a distinction between members has been made, the decision unavoidably opens up the whole question of what our species is. What is it about any members of our species which makes the liberal rights of justice their due? The judge unwittingly looses the terrible question: has the long tradition of liberal right any support in what human beings in fact are? Is this a question that in the modern era can be truthfully answered in the positive? Or does it hand the cup of poison to out liberalism?
–George Parkin Grant, English-Speaking Justice (1974)
This scribbling was prompted by this article concerning Richard Dawkins’ belief that it is immoral to allow Downs Syndrome children to be born. He tweeted, “Abort it and try again.”
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