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You can't say that

This is a slightly touchy subject: Professorial control over in-class language. But I'm going to broach it anyway, and in perhaps an unexpected area.

A bit of language reported to me as having been used by a student in a college class lately (not one of Esteemed Husband's classes, in case anyone is wondering), during a discussion of personal identity: "Well, suppose you were in an accident, and after that you were just a carrot..."

I'm guessing that most professors would not allow students to use the n-word in class. Just guessing. I want to recommend that, in that same spirit, professors (and GA's, etc.--all teachers) put the same ban on referring to a fellow human being in the utterly degrading way that that student did.

Given the topic of class discussion, and given the current status in our society of the student's views, I suppose the teacher had to treat it as in some sense acceptable for the student to opine that a person in a long-term comatose state is a lesser human being. Frankly, I'm quite open to the position that in a better society it would be unacceptable in polite company to speak of any living human being as life unworthy of life. Another bit of student talk reported to me from a college class lately, approving of the proposal that a physically healthy "bum" be killed for his organs: "Well, he's not doing any good to anyone now, so at least then..." Presumably if a student showed up in class and said, "It would be okay to cannibalize a black person for his organs as long as he was going to be used for a superior race. That would be doing more good to society," his view would be treated with open horror and disgust by everyone else in the class, including the teacher. But teachers, even those who are horrified, apparently feel that they have to be "professional" when it is only "bums" or the severely cognitively disabled whom their students speak of as sub-human.

Well, okay. I guess.

But at a minimum, if a student is going to express the hateful view that some humans are sub-human, he should have to do so in precise and non-disgusting language. No "carrot" talk. For that matter, no referring to another human being as "a vegetable." It is most unfortunate that the adjectival form, "vegetative," has entered our medico-legal lexicon and is actually used in law. But even there we see a very slight shying away from the outright contempt of the noun form. The noun form should be out of bounds. As Wesley J. Smith says in comments at his blog, "We don't use the v-word around here."

If you teach a class where these subjects come up, I encourage you to adopt these standards. If a student speaks of another human being--hypothetical or real--as "just a carrot," simply look at him and say this: "Justin, this is an interesting discussion, and you are free in this class to express your opinion that some living human beings should be thought of as sub-human. I disagree strongly, and we can have a discussion about it. But you may not in this class refer to a living fellow human being as 'a carrot', anymore than you may in this class refer to a fellow human being as 'a nigger'. I hope that is understood. Now, try restating your position in other terms."

Heavy-handed? Too bad. If any language is unacceptable in class, this should be.

Comments (66)

Thank you. Same goes for fetuses being referred to as 'blobs of tissue' or 'parasites'.

I can't say that I've often witnessed great solicitude for a student's freedom to choose his own phrasing. Further, it seems rather self-evident that if a student is using crass language improperly to bolster a position in a debate (and if "vegetable" doesn't qualify, I don't know what does), a professor is justified in admonishing his usage. Nobody would argue if the student were admonished for recourse to some other fallacy.

I can think of two events, one respectable and one rather silly. The first involved a polite admonition regarding the term "apocrypha." The second entailed a rather frothing interruption when a student punned on Carville and quipped "it's a baby, stupid": I think the professor felt personally insulted.

Actually, the v-word (and c-word) is worse than the n-word. The student didn't opine that a person in a long-term comatose state is a lesser human being. He opined that a person in a long-term comatose state is a NON human being. The n-word wasn't/isn't used to classify someone as a non-human.

Reading your post again, I think "sub-human" could be replaced with "non-human." Makes your point even stronger.

I've never understood banning language in a classroom. Isn't someone's using language one disapproves of a perfect "teaching moment"?

For instance, suppose one used the "n-word" in class. One could respond, as Lydia suggests, by pointing out to the student that such language is forbidden.

OR, one could ask the student to justify use of such language. And the request for justification should even be friendly and open. What the student should see, as a result of this exercise, is that no decent justification can be given. Thus, the student hasn't had their language curtailed. Instead, the student has come to see WHY such language is problematic.

So if one thinks that referring to one in a persistent vegetative state as a "vegetable" is problematic, why not invite (again, in a friendly and open manner) the student to defend the use. Odds are they'll retreat to the phrase "persistent vegetative state", and will learn that how they refer to someone can influence how we're thinking about an issue.

This seems far more appropriate than banning certain phrases, which seems likely to hinder learning rather than cause it.

Ehhhh... okay, so try disciplining a child like that. Oh look, your daughter has somehow acquired music by a horrible rap artist. What do you do---tell her such music is forbidden under your roof and throw it away? Or sit down with her and listen through the album so you can "talk about whether it's good or not"?

This seems far more appropriate than banning certain phrases, which seems likely to hinder learning rather than cause it.

I disagree, Tod. I think that we should be aiming to discuss these things with a certain amount of dignity, professionalism, and decorum. I would imagine there is some language that you would not want a teacher to use. For example, a teacher who persistently used the n-word as if it were a normal part of discourse (I don't mean in an isolated instance, mentioning rather than using the word, etc.) would understandably be considered to be behaving unprofessionally. Part of education is teaching students, as well, to behave with a certain amount of dignity, decorum, and professionalism.

I actually take that to be a more dignified approach to students than just allowing them to trash-talk all over the place and _only_ asking them to justify the use of their trash-talk rather than telling them not to do it.

As far as I'm concerned, the words I'm suggesting banning should be treated on a par with pointless crudity and profanity.

Obviously, the discussion in our imaginary classroom, above, _will_ involve the very issues that you, Tod, would presumably want to have brought out in the discussion you recommend. What banning the term does is to tell students that they can't just use such terminology *as if it is normal*. My approach teaches them to think and allows discussion just as much as yours does, but it also teaches them that there are some "societies" (even if only the mini-society consisting of this classroom) in which those words are considered disgusting, bad manners, etc.

Every society has to have manners and limits. Presumably you, Tod, would also have limits on appropriate classroom behavior. You just don't like the idea of applying that concept of inappropriate classroom behavior to something linguistic that can be used to express an idea. My position is that notions of basic decency and manners can and should be applied to language.

I wonder what you would say, Tod, if a student started abusing another student verbally, calling a specific other student repeatedly by the n-word, and was not convinced by your "open and friendly" discussion in which you asked him to justify his usage. What if he just shrugged his shoulders over the fact that he couldn't justify it and went on doing it one class session after another--say, greeting the other student with that epithet whenever he or the other student first entered the classroom?

Technically, someone in a persistent vegetative state is a vegetator, not a vegetable. They are not even vegetating, because that implies a conscious decision. The word will not get banned because the word, "vegetable," has linguistically broadened to this definition and linguistic use genies rarely go back into the bottle.

The use will get worse for about one generation and then be regarded as old-fashioned. Unfortunately, that just happens to be the generation with the greatest number of old people in history.

The Chicken

The use will get worse for about one generation and then be regarded as old-fashioned.

I'm curious: What happens after that? Linguistically? Do we start calling the disabled "dirt" or something?

Not, 'dirt,' but Carousel participants, a la Logan's Run :)

The Chicken

Frankly, I'm quite open to the position that in a better society it would be unacceptable in polite company to speak of any living human being as life unworthy of life.

Socrates: "The unexamined life isn't worth living for a human being." I.e., you non-philosophers are leading pathetic (one might even say vegetative) lives, but some of you might become at least noble dogs if philosophers rule.

Speaking of comparing humans to dogs, consider Aristotle:

"Where then there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals (as in the case of those whose business is to use their body, and who can do nothing better), the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master."

Do I have to feign moral outrage and make apologies for these sorts of statements too (as one of my own professors did when he read aloud a passage in Machiavelli's Prince about how badly one should treat Fortuna as a woman)?

Do I have to feign moral outrage and make apologies for these sorts of statements too

If you don't feel moral outrage, don't feign it. We could get into a discussion of things like the difference between Socrates's statement and Aristotle's. I think there obviously _is_ a difference. Perhaps you don't.

But there is certainly a difference between Socrates's statement and the Nazi-like opinions expressed by the students in my examples in the main post. I'm rather surprised, Perseus, that you don't see that. You should be able to. If you aren't already familiar with the way in which the Lebensunwertes Leben opinion that some entirely innocent but weak or socially disfavored people *really should be killed or might as well be killed for the benefit of the rest of us* is becoming more and more acceptable among both philosophers and ordinary young people, wake up and smell the coffee.

Do I have to feign moral outrage and make apologies for these sorts of statements too...

No, but if you promote them as being supportive of your own beliefs I will ridicule you without mercy. I suppose I'm simply not noble enough to wear a leash.

There are two slippery slopes here that descend into very different pits. On the one hand, the use of terms like "vegetable" to refer to people in a comatose state could lead to the thought that such people are less than fully human - or not human at all - and so desensitize us to the point where we are okay with treating people like that as if they are not human.

The other slippery slope, however, starts with banning words that are deemed to be offensive or insensitive in this way. The next step is "you can only refer to x group as 'African Americans', you can only refer to y group as 'First Nations'" and so on and so forth. The step after that is the appointment of a government investigatory body that polices everything you say and charges you with a hate crime if you use the wrong words. We went down that slippery slope in Canada and are only now beginning to crawl out of the pit of politically correct thought control it brought us to.

Where exactly the narrow road between these slippery slopes lies is extremely difficult to discern.

I've never understood banning language in a classroom. Isn't someone's using language one disapproves of a perfect "teaching moment"?

For instance, suppose one used the "n-word" in class. One could respond, as Lydia suggests, by pointing out to the student that such language is forbidden.

Tod, here are several reasons one might want to have a general policy regarding the use of language in class, although a list of "banned" words is impractical. For starters, a discussion about the appropriateness of certain terminology might not be related to the subject of the course, or it might be off-topic for the day's lecture.

But even if a classroom has a general policy against the use of certain terms, that doesn't mean students will never use them. I'd imagine that a hypothetical professor who follows Lydia's example would, upon hearing a student use the v-word, do exactly what you describe and point out that such language is forbidden. (I suspect you meant to type "inappropriate" or a similar word there; the distinction between language that is "forbidden" and language that is "banned" seems to be a pretty small one.)

For the record, Lydia, even though I've been called an annoying liberal on this site in the past, I think you make a good point in your OP and I agree with you. And I think the general policy is sound: in college classrooms, during discussions, absent a compelling specific reason, professors and students should avoid using language that has the effect of referring to a class or category of human beings as if they are non-human, or less-than-human, or less human than other people.

I also think it's important--in the context of this discussion and also in setting class policy--to make a distinction between using a word and talking about a word or quoting it. It's not the word itself that is inappropriate; it's the behavior of using a word and applying it to human beings. The professor in your example isn't using the word "nigger," they're talking about the word. And a list of banned words doesn't make sense--"carrot" is offensive because it is applied to a human being, in your example, not because it's a bad word. (I don't expect you'll disagree with me; I'm just mentioning it because I think it's a distinction that matters.)

I agree with you, Phil, about use vs. mention. I made the same point in one of the comments but am a bit fuzzy right now and too tired to find it. You'll find it up-thread. Also, I think the main post does clearly agree with you that I'm not talking about a _list_ of banned words, since there cd. be plenty of contexts in which a carrot is just a carrot, but about this particular usage.

To Gerry Neal: I don't think this is a slippery slope issue, because I think the classroom is a social area in which the professor has a certain amount of understandable authority--as a person would in his home, when coaching a team, leading a discussion group, etc. There always have been, always will be, and always should be notions of etiquette in language within social settings. People set these up in a variety of ways. Sometimes it's just a matter of giving someone a "look." Sometimes it's a matter of being spontaneously disgusted and conspicuously changing the subject. And so forth. But in a classroom, there is structure, and it's a perfectly normal interpersonal thing for the professor to use that structure (e.g., the fact that he's running the classroom discourse) to set certain bounds of etiquette. This has nothing to do with a "slippery slope" toward government control. This is normal human interaction and the normal use of authority among people.

We could get into a discussion of things like the difference between Socrates's statement and Aristotle's. I think there obviously _is_ a difference. Perhaps you don't.

There might be a difference in those specific statements, but I don't think that there would much disagreement between the two over Aristotle's characterization of some people as being practically subhuman or his argument that (in the best regime) deformed children should be exposed because they were not advocates of the equal worth and dignity of all human beings.

The contemporary phenomenon which you refer to strikes me as a perverse contradiction in modern egalitarian liberalism whose cardinal "virtue" is compassion. My natural inclination would be to press such a student's (muddled) argument to its logical, anti-egalitarian conclusion:

Student: He's a mental vegetable, so he shouldn't live.
Me: What's a mental vegetable?
Student: Someone who doesn't think.
Me: What is "thinking"?
[...dialogue about what is thinking...]
Me: Do you engage in much true "thinking"?
Student: Not really.
Me: So you are basically a mental vegetable.
Student: Yes.
Me: If you are a mental vegetable, then, according to you, you shouldn't live. Are you ready to check out now?
Student: It's late and I've got to go to afternoon beer bust now.
Me: I'll take that as a "yes."

Of course, overestimating the force of argument gets philosophers and politicians into trouble, so it might be more effective for supporters of your position to pay careful attention to language.

No, but if you promote them as being supportive of your own beliefs I will ridicule you without mercy. I suppose I'm simply not noble enough to wear a leash.

Being subject to merciless ridicule is par for the course in my position, so have at it!

Perseus - thanks. It's been weeks since anybody provided me with such a good laugh.

Perseus, I have no problem agreeing that if someone were seriously to promote Aristotle's views (to which you refer) as his own now, it would be just for him to be practically ostracized in the philosophical world. Let's just say that the philosophical world has other priorities in ostracism. Non-feminists seem to have more to worry about than advocates of infanticide. Peter Singer is doing just fine.

Well, Aristotle got a few thing wrong about biology, as well. The human race has learned a few things since then about itself.

The Chicken

Can a carrot in a garden hear what you say to or about it? Interestingly it turns out that some human "vegtables" can and have heard those at their bedside holding discusions on their condition & fate. Show me a carrot that can, in due course, effect that and I'll give it it's own garden.
Distinctions can be troublesome, causing thought, dilemmas, moral considerations, headaches to be avoided. What better way to do it than with a slur.

I'm not sure that specifically *moral* outrage is actually required here (although it's justified). My reaction, on hearing such a thing in a class discussion, would be, "Wait, what? An accident turns a person into a *carrot*? Could you clarify that, please?" Forcing the student to be precise about what he or she means is generally going to be enough to get rid of the offensive terminology without the level of resistance you'll get if you frame it as a moral issue. You can even get rid of "vegetable" that way, since once you're on the clarification track you can ask in *exactly what sense* this injured person is a "vegetable", and you can point out the important differences between human beings medically determined to be in PVS and actual vegetable-kingdom-type vegetables. Once you require people to qualify their simplifications, it becomes much simpler just to use a more medically-correct terminology--which still allows disabled folks to be recognized as *people*.

Personally, I'm hearing echoes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the student's words ("She turned me into a newt!" "She turned you into a newt?" "It got better!"). Substitute "carrot" for "newt", and the student's statement is just as ridiculous.

Of course, maybe Lydia was less interested in productive classroom tactics and more interested in the moral case against tolerating such a poorly-rooted use of language :-).

Peace,
--Peter

I'm interested in having teachers set a higher tone of discourse and require it of their students rather than letting the students assume that "everyone understands"--i.e., agrees with--their repugnant perspective concerning the cognitively severely disabled. It's a matter of in essence saying, "You may be able to get away with that around your buddies, but here you're in a different social milieu, and there actually _are_ people, including people in a higher-prestige position than yours, who find that kind of language objectionable."

A student who uses that term in that way has picked up somewhere the idea that it's acceptable. Someone else has presumably used it around him, and he has presumably "swum" in a certain "pond" in which people accept your talking that way. As with the use of the n-word (or other things, such as, say, dirty talk about women), I believe it's a salutary pulling-up-short for people who think they can just sit around like "good ol' boys" speaking in this nasty way to realize that they're now in an environment that thinks of that as bad behavior.

The thing about terms like "carrot" and "vegetable" for severely disabled people is that they usually have _not_ been treated in this way but rather as at least semi-respectable expressions of fully respectable intellectual positions. I'm trying to encourage people who don't agree that they are even semi-respectable expressions of fully respectable intellectual positions to use their position as teachers to make that plain, as they would be likely to do with other kinds of trash-talk.

Once you require people to qualify their simplifications, it becomes much simpler just to use a more medically-correct terminology--which still allows disabled folks to be recognized as *people*.

What would the terminology be? Even doctors use the term, vegetative. Of course, vegetative has a specific definition inn medicine which is lost on the layman.

The Chicken

"In a long-term comatose state" would be fairly precise.

This may come as a surprise, but for once, Lydia, I completely agree with you!

Well, Aristotle got a few thing wrong about biology, as well.

True, but in less technical discussions, such terms don't seem inappropriate. And, indeed, Aristotle (Ethics, I.13) speaking more loosely refers to one part of the irrational part of the soul as being "vegetative" (dealing with nurture and growth) that has "no share in reason," which is the distinctive characteristic of humans. So it doesn't seem egregiously inaccurate (or immoral) to me to use "vegetative" instead of something like "long-term comatose state."

As with the use of the n-word (or other things, such as, say, dirty talk about women), I believe it's a salutary pulling-up-short for people who think they can just sit around like "good ol' boys" speaking in this nasty way to realize that they're now in an environment that thinks of that as bad behavior.

Vegetative/vegetable may be more a colloquial expression, but it is not clear that it is comparable in its contemptuous nastiness as those other terms.

I guess you haven't been listening to the kinds of things I'm quoting in the main post. It is being used *as a dismissal* of the person's fully human status, usually *in the very context* of discussing personal identity, whether one is even a person or not at that point, and even criteria for organ transplant. As I say, Perseus, I just don't think you get it. These are being used _as_ terms indicating the importantly lesser human or non-human status of these patients, even sometimes proceeding to the suggestion that they be regarded as dead (though they are unambiguously physically alive). And the tossed-off, "Well, what if you were just a carrot?" is part and parcel of the entire position. In my book, that _is_ contemptuous nastiness.

I disagree very strongly with treating language that dismisses whole classes of human beings as sub-human trash as some sort of serious and respectable philosophical terminology.

Let me also add that even in the main post (I don't know if you noticed this), while expressing serious problems with the use of the adjectival "vegetative," I acknowledged a distinction between that and the noun "vegetable." The former, for one thing, _has_, most unfortunately, become part of our legal lexicon. Its use by students is therefore somewhat more excusable. For another thing, students are somewhat more likely to use the term as an adjective referring to a _state_ (as in "persistent vegetative state") rather than referring to a _person_. Whereas, "He's just a vegetable" or "He's just a carrot" is a full-stop, metaphysical characterization of a human being as a non-human entity. It's somewhat (though not entirely) like the distinction between the phrase "dog-like devotion" applied to a person's attitude and the statement, about a woman, "She's a real dog."

I have a couple lines in my syllabus to deal with this, rather broadly. It runs as follows:

Use of foul, vulgar or demeaning language in your papers or during class discussions; rude or abusive behavior toward fellow classmates, or of any kind that otherwise disrupts the civilized atmosphere necessary to the educational task, will not be tolerated. You’ll be warned once; after that we’ll see about finding you an exit strategy. (Note: the definition of words like ‘foul’, ‘vulgar’, and ‘rude’ are not to be found in the eye of the beholder, but in mine.)

Lydia, I'm wondering if you're trying to make a *metaphysical* or an *epistemological* point, here.

Do you think that it is a *conceptual impossibility* that, once an organism has achieved what Aristotle calls a "rational soul," it can ever fall back to a point where it only possesses what he calls a "nutritive" (or "vegetative") soul, without even the *potential* to rise again to the level of "rational soul?"

Or do you just think that we have no reliable way of *knowing* when such an unfortunate event has happened, and so must always err on the side of caution?

Steve, I don't think individuals "achieve" a "rational soul." They either have one--in virtue of the type of being that they are, not in virtue of actualized potential--or they don't. If they do, they do. If that's not the type of being that they are, they don't.

Conceptually, I can imagine sci-fi scenarios in which a being starts out its existence as one type of being (say, an ordinary chicken), and then mysteriously and for no fully explicable reason (though of course the sci-fi writer would pretend that he had given an explicable reason) _turns into_ a different type of being (say, a talking chicken).

That, however, doesn't happen in the real world. I could give you what I take to be the explanation for why it doesn't happen. That would be a metaphysical reason having to do with the origin of minds. For the present purposes, I think it's enough simply to note that, in fact, we don't see it happening. It certainly is not what happens when, say, a baby grows up and starts talking, because a baby was a human being even before it could talk.

I also think that as a medical and empirical matter, we cannot terribly reliably tell when a human being's comatose state is permanent. There is nothing about a persistent comatose state, even one that has been persistent thus far, that is somehow *essentially* permanent. It either turns out to be permanent or it doesn't.

Metaphysically, though, no: Either you are a living human being or you are not. If you are a living human being, you are not a vegetable. So it shouldn't matter. If you, most unfortunately and misguidedly, think it does matter, you should *of course* at least err on the side of caution.

In the main post, my point is one about contemptuous, dehumanizing language used for human beings--yea, verily, including those human beings in long-term comatose states. I think it's wrong to use such language and should be classified, in the admirable words of Bill's syllabus, as "foul, vulgar or demeaning."

Let me also add that even in the main post (I don't know if you noticed this), while expressing serious problems with the use of the adjectival "vegetative," I acknowledged a distinction between that and the noun "vegetable." The former, for one thing, _has_, most unfortunately, become part of our legal lexicon.

I did see that, but I am not yet convinced that use of the adjectival form is especially objectionable (so its use is not yet verboten in my classroom).

I'm wondering if you're trying to make a *metaphysical* or an *epistemological* point, here.

I'm wondering the same thing. I suspect it's the former (particularly if one draws the conclusion that someone definitively reduced to possessing only a vegetative/nutritive is essentially dead as a human being).

I'm wondering if you're trying to make a *metaphysical* or an *epistemological* point, here.

Why can't it be both?

To get down to instances, every semester someone invariably uses the term "vegetable" because someone invariably chooses euthanasia as a research topic, and most of those who do are for it. When this occurs, my immediate response is a question: "Well, if you want to dehumanize someone, I guess calling him a vegetable will do the trick, won't it? If you think he's worth no more than a head of cabbage, killing him will be easy, won't it?"

The looks on their faces are often quite interesting.

is essentially dead as a human being

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Perseus, if it were really true in an ordinary sense that the patient is dead, we wouldn't need to make such arguments. We'd bury or cremate the body and move on. The reason people have to say such things is precisely because, darn it, the patient's heart goes on beating, the patient goes on breathing and metabolizing. Very often patients diagnosed as in a PVS don't even require breathing support. So from the ordinary, biological perspective, they are alive. That is a _problem_ for people who want them out of the way, so they have to make these imprecise comments such as that they are "essentially dead as a human being."

But what the heck. As I said in a different post, Perseus, when rigorous people use words like "essentially," they usually mean something strong by them. If you really think that, then I would guess that you will advocate taking vital organs from such patients and/or burying or cremating them. Right now, and without further ado. No? Oh. So you _didn't_ mean "essentially."

By the way, I'm mentally bookmarking this entire discussion to link to the next time someone tries to tell me that if we would only return to Aristotelian hylemorphism, people would stop saying that people in a long-term comatose state might as well be dead, or are dead, or things to that effect. Voila. Perseus and Steve are evidence to the contrary. They're having a grand time using Aristotelian categories to justify considering the person to be truly in a metaphysical state equivalent to that of vegetable matter. I'm not myself blaming Aristotle for this. I just suggest that other people not treat Aristotle as the solution.

By the way, I'm mentally bookmarking this entire discussion to link to the next time someone tries to tell me that if we would only return to Aristotelian hylemorphism, people would stop saying that people in a long-term comatose state might as well be dead, or are dead, or things to that effect. Voila. Perseus and Steve are evidence to the contrary.They're having a grand time using Aristotelian categories to justify considering the person to be truly in a metaphysical state equivalent to that of vegetable matter. I'm not myself blaming Aristotle for this. I just suggest that other people not treat Aristotle as the solution.

I would have thought that arguments like ours are a commonplace objection to that approach, and I agree that it is inadvisable to treat Aristotle (or other ancient pagan philosophers) as providing some easy solution.

Perhaps you could explain that to a Thomist sometime, Perseus. (You and I are, I know, using "solution" in quite different senses, but I think the point stands: Hylemorphism doesn't somehow block your position on this issue.)

That is a _problem_ for people who want them out of the way, so they have to make these imprecise comments such as that they are "essentially dead as a human being."

It is imprecise if phrased that way, but the precise description in Aristotelian terms is that they are essentially not persons - they are human bodies with only nutritive souls. To import human being into the phrase would require a narrow, libertarian meaning of homo sapiens.

Being subject to merciless ridicule is par for the course in my position, so have at it!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xeqixj_kids-in-the-hall-bingo_fun

Interesting, Lydia. I know that you and Dr. Feser both write for this blog, and I'd love to see you and him debate on this issue, since I find his arguments very, very convincing.

Sadly, he doesn't write for W4 anymore, J.a.G., our pleas for him to stay notwithstanding.

But you can see a partial, exceedingly brief, discussion of a related issue between commentator Untenured and me on the other on-going thread about a supposedly "transsexual boy."

You can see for yourself right here in this thread that, indeed, an Aristotelian position does _not_ block one from taking the position that the long-term unconscious patient is a "non-person" or "dead" or "essentially dead," or whatever. Perseus & co. simply use Aristotelian categories and categorize the person as having _lost_ his rational soul and thus having been downgraded to having a merely "nutritive" or "vegetative" soul. How one manages to lose a rational soul is a bit of a mystery to me. ("Now, where the heck did I put that?") But then, I'm one of those darned Cartesians, so perhaps I just don't get it.

But then, I'm one of those darned Cartesians, so perhaps I just don't get it.

Okay, so what is it about Cartesian dualism that makes this better? Doesn't the whole cogito ergo sum depend upon self-awareness, reflection and consciousness?

Well, for one thing, the soul is immortal on a Cartesian view. Nothing that happens to the body can actually make the soul just sort of "wink out."

But look, I'm happy to agree that one can find ways to squirm around and defend the hateful view that living, breathing human beings are just so much inconvenient medical waste given _most_ philosophical positions. After all, the thinkers we're talking about usually weren't addressing this issue.

...an Aristotelian position does _not_ block one from taking the position that the long-term unconscious patient is a "non-person" or "dead" or "essentially dead," or whatever. Perseus & co. simply use Aristotelian categories and categorize the person as having _lost_ his rational soul and thus having been downgraded to having a merely "nutritive" or "vegetative" soul.

I'm not an expert, of course, but I don't believe this for a second. From what I've read of Ed's work, I think he'd say this is a perversion of A-T philosophy. A rational soul is "essential" to human nature. If someone like Terri Schiavo had lost her rational soul, we'd have had to call her something other than human (like a vegetable). But you can't become what you never were.

Darn, I love Dr. Feser. It's a shame he no longer writes here.

I've seen enough of Feser to know that he'd disagree with you, so in any case I'll have to parse his articles to see why. This raises interesting points though.

Also, this, from Mr. Luse:

"From what I've read of Ed's work, I think he'd say this is a perversion of A-T philosophy. A rational soul is "essential" to human nature. If someone like Terri Schiavo had lost her rational soul, we'd have had to call her something other than human (like a vegetable). But you can't become what you never were."

I had a post like that pre-written but I was worried that I was missing something and so changed it to my previous statement. This is kind of what I had in mind though.

Bill, I agree with you. This is an example of what is called (in the parlance of a bright scholar of Aristotle whom I know) a non-principled use of Aristotelian physical ideas. In other words, using his names but not his thinking. A human being (union of body and rational soul) IS a human person, ceases to be a human being when the soul departs the body, and this is when the entity itself dies. Everything else is window dressing for false theories. You cannot have the entity continue its life but not continue having that very same soul that made it human to begin with. Departure of the soul is death.

Unfortunately, Aristotle did in fact muddy the waters by his "natural slave" theory. Fortunately for us Christians (since we have revelation to assist us), we know that even the best of men can make mistakes, and that goes for the best of thinkers as well: they can get 98% of it right and still get 2% wrong. The error doesn't invalidate the true parts.

IMHO, there is absolutely no reason to simply tolerate language like "she's a vegetable" in the classroom. On the other hand, there are ways, and then there are ways, of NOT tolerating this. One way is to make formal rules and laws that forbid the practice. That's probably a poor way of doing it. Another way is to make sure the practice is heaped with richly deserved scorn. A third way is to defeat the ideas behind it with carefully reasoned discourse.

The third way may be appropriate in some cases, at some times: for example, with people who really should NOT be expected to already know why it is bad. Showing them is an act of charity as well as good pedagogy. But with people who really do know better deep down, they are not using the abusive language because they are simply ignorant, they are using it from bad will. Careful educational discourse doesn't really address bad will, it only addresses ignorance. When he have bad will, the offender often will refuse to see the truth no matter how clearly you lay it out. (Something we have plenty of experience with right here, now that I think of it.) As has been argued forthrightly at this site in the past, there IS in fact a suitable place for ridicule in some situations.

Tony, would Aristotle himself even have recognized as meaningful a concept like "the soul departing the body"? Wouldn't this imply that the soul might be going somewhere else?

But look, I'm happy to agree that one can find ways to squirm around and defend the hateful view that living, breathing human beings are just so much inconvenient medical waste given _most_ philosophical positions.

If I had ever used that sort of rhetoric your accusation would have merit, which it doesn't. I have never once stated that it is preferable they be denied care, I have only claimed there is a legitimate choice made by their guardians after twelve months about whether or not to continue. For those like Bill who don't know my position on Schiavo, I wrote at the time of the court battle that it was immoral for her husband to deny her family legal custody. I am apparently so "hateful" that I thought she should be placed with the people who wanted to keep her alive.

A rational soul is "essential" to human nature.

Surprisingly, everyone seems to agree on that point. Some of us think a rational soul is more than a life force, it implies higher brain function.

Perhaps you could explain that to a Thomist sometime, Perseus.

Being a Thomist might be problematic to the extent that a Thomist's interpretation of Aristotle was influenced by Christianity, particularly because my argument also rested on Aristotle's politics (I'm a political theorist after all), which are unabashedly inegalitarian (e.g., slavery and exposing defective children) and prudential, both of which conflict with Thomistic natural law.

I'd also refer to De Anima, where Aristotle discusses what a soul is:

Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance or essence of the eye which corresponds to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name-it is no more a real eye than the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.

If the part or power of the soul corresponding to thinking (which is distinct from the nutritive, appetitive, locomotive, etc. and which seems to be capable of being separated) is no longer functioning, and that is the distinctive characteristic of being human, then it would seem to be human in name only-just as a person "who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle" is "not very different" from a tame animal.

I hope I am not completely derailing this discussion, but Lydia is wrong to suggest that Aristotelian hylemorphism is simply no better at defending the inherent dignity of human life than Cartesian dualism. That an argument can be constructed using the familiar terminology is not indicative of such a wide variety of interpretations.

As the substantial form of the human body, the soul is the principle of the entire life of the person. Humans do not possess a vegetative soul responsible for nutrition and reproduction, a sensitive soul in order to sense, and a rational soul in order to reason and understand intelligible being. Humans have one soul, a rational soul, which is responsible for all the activities of even the lower orders. There is no "downgrading" to a lower type of soul because there is no other soul present. A living person has a rational soul, and death is the only means by which this soul may be lost.

We might say that the actual operations of the person cannot rise above the vegetative level or that the person's current state of life is somehow analogous to a vegetable, but this by no means can justify the belief that the rational soul is gone. The person is still living and should be treated as such.

The person is still living and should be treated as such.

I couldn't agree more. I brought up the Aristotelian issue because I sometimes feel annoyed at the assertion that somehow hylemorphism would make people affirm this.

My own position, as I implied to Step2 above, is that asking these questions of ancient thinkers is to no small extent anachronistic. I would say that this is true whether one is asking what Aristotle, Descartes, or Locke would have said about these issues. A large degree of conjecture goes into answering the historical question.

For example, did Aristotle (not Thomas, mind you) ever directly address the question of whether an organism that has a rational soul can ever come to have a different kind of soul or cease to have a rational soul when or if it appears to lose the distinctively rational capacities?

I don't know the answer to this, not being a scholar of Aristotle. My own guess would be, from other things I've seen in the history of philosophy, that he never addressed it directly or clearly. One set of people in this thread wants to insist that he _would have_ answered "No." Hence, if you are a human being, you have a rational soul until you physically die, and that's that. I don't know what the textual evidence is for this.

Another set of people (including Perseus, with whom I _strongly_ disagree on the issue of the status of patients in a comatose state) brings textual evidence that at least suggests that Aristotle might have said, "Yes." I tend to think Perseus's interpretive position makes a certain amount of philosophical sense, given that, as I understand it, Aristotle talked about these matters in terms of capacities of the soul-body composite which is the organism.

But even that evidence is only suggestive.

Unless it can be shown that Aristotle did directly address this question or one so close to it as makes no logical difference, that the answer is decisively "no," and that this answer is tightly bound up with his hylemorphism, I think some greater care is in order on the part of the pro-life hylemorphists when touting their position as somehow _the_ pro-life position on this issue.

The human mind is endlessly inventive for evil, as witness the fact that most of the people now asserting the kill-ability of the long-term comatose are materialists, yet they will happily avail themselves of strangely pseudo-theological talk of the "person's having gone away" (as if God took the soul to heaven while accidentally leaving the body alive) if that serves their political purpose. Of course, from a materialist position, we're all just a bunch of moving matter anyway, so it's hard to see why anyone should even care what is done to Terri Schiavo nor what a concept like "the ethical thing to do" even means.

There is virtually no abstract, general philosophical position (as opposed to a highly specific position to the effect that all human beings have unique value and that innocent human beings must not be deliberately killed) that cannot be used to justify the evils we're contemplating. And a Christianized (or should I say "humanized"?) version of either hylemorphism or Cartesianism can consistently oppose them.

Tony, would Aristotle himself even have recognized as meaningful a concept like "the soul departing the body"? Wouldn't this imply that the soul might be going somewhere else?

Sorry, figurative language. We don't really have good language for what happens, because we are driven so much by what we see: the visible aspects of the body. For Aristotle, the soul doesn't depart the body in the sense of the soul going somewhere leaving the body behind. When the soul ceases to be the principle of unity, organization, and life of the matter, the body ceases to be a human body at all and becomes something else. The soul doesn't go somewhere else, "where" only makes sense to bodies.

did Aristotle (not Thomas, mind you) ever directly address the question of whether an organism that has a rational soul can ever come to have a different kind of soul or cease to have a rational soul when or if it appears to lose the distinctively rational capacities?

I don't recall directly. Indirectly, his teaching doesn't really provide room for it, I think. Let's consider an animal instead of a human being. Can an animal that is gravely damaged "become" a plant, for example, i.e. a vegetable? I don't think so. In the ordinary course of death, the animal's soul earlier was the form of the body, making it to be (a baby) rabbit. Along comes a tiger and swallows the rabbit whole. At some point inside, the rabbit can longer remain a rabbit, and eventually all of its matter is tiger-matter. But what happens in between? The rabbit-matter doesn't pass into tiger-matter immediately, it happens through a (minimum) 2-stage process. First the rabbit dies, and the rabbit-matter is, then, the matter of another sort of stuff altogether: probably we would say that "what it is" is clumps of biochemicals organized as tissues, but these organized arrangements are not actually tissues "of" a rabbit, they are only like to tissues of a rabbit, because there is no rabbit-form to them. The "what they are" is definitely much lower down the chain of reality than a plant.

Then the tiger absorbs the chemicals. At that point the matter of what had been rabbit, and THEN had been the matter of biochemicals, is NOW tiger-matter. There is no stage at which the matter is the matter of some "plant-thing". What kind of plant would it be the matter of, and whence would come the source of this plant-form? No, the matter that had been organized by the form of rabbit now ceases to be organized by that form, and therefore the matter no longer has a principle of life organization or a principle of integrity. Certainly it has no plant-based principle of integrity. When a higher-form living substance loses its form, it doesn't fall DIRECTLY into an intermediate-form living substance, because there is no way for that intermediate form to have come into being to be the organizing and life-giving principle of the matter.

As long as the comatose patient retains enough that her parts are still intelligibly parts of her, then this is because her form remains the principle of organization and integrity that makes her to be a single entity. And that means she is still human, for this is the form that gives her matter that kind of integrity. If her matter were to come to be the matter of a plant-form, then that plant-form would no longer be capable of being a principle of organization that makes sense of her liver, her brain, her eye, etc.

I definitely agree that the whole Aristotelian metaphysical shtick is strongly connected to "kinds of things." I think the (what shall I call him?) pro-death Aristotelian? would have to argue that the long-term comatose patient is a different "kind of thing" from the merely sleeping, healthy patient, and probably would have to argue that we need more categories than "plant," "human," and "animal," etc. But, he would presumably argue, just as we have discovered that there are normal animals, normal plants, and normal humans, so too the advent of modern times when human patients more frequently live long-term in a comatose state (e.g., because of the advent of tube feeding) has shown us that there is this additional kind of thing--a human-looking body with only a nutritive soul, which nutritive soul is sufficient to provide a principle of organization and integrity for this kind of thing--and we discover that empirically just as we discovered the existence of rabbits empirically.

At that point the big question is whether one kind of thing can, by way of severe injury, be turned into a different kind of thing. "Can" here presumably would have some sort of metaphysical meaning that would go beyond logical necessity.

Similarly, a strongly interactive Cartesian believes that there is some reason (I prefer to call such reasons psycho-physical laws) that connects created souls with particular bodies. The question then is whether a particular soul "can" (again, some sense of "can" other than mere logical possibility) be fully and permanently separated from its body without the occurrence of death.

In both cases I think what we're talking about is *the way the world actually works*. What one thinks about the way the world actually works will depend on a lot of things. For example, the Cartesian really _would_ have to decide where the soul went in that case, why the body didn't die, why God allowed this or brought this about, whether the soul would be returned to the body in the event of a cure (and taken away again in the event of a relapse!), and whether all these sensible questions don't make it totally absurd to contemplate seriously the idea that long-term comatose patients are zombies.

The Aristotelian has to ask whether it makes sense to imagine one thing's actually turning into another type of thing and whether it makes sense to believe that a sheer accident happening to the body can bring this about.

On both sides there are problems for the person who tries to get his philosophy to accommodate a pro-death position (which is not a very common-sensical position, however you slice it, not to mention morally monstrous), but I think it can be done on both sides with sufficient bad will and bullet-biting.

Hence, my conclusion is that the abstract and generalized versions of these philosophies do not absolutely settle these questions and that Christian pro-lifers of both kinds should just be glad that each other have the right, elaborated form of the philosophies in question.

I brought up the Aristotelian issue because I sometimes feel annoyed at the assertion that somehow hylemorphism would make people affirm this.
...my conclusion is that the abstract and generalized versions of these philosophies do not absolutely settle these questions

I agree. I would add that trying to draw a conclusion about how we should treat a person in a given situation based on a recourse to hylemorphism contradicts Aristotle's advice that we should use primarily practical wisdom rather than theoretical wisdom in deliberating about what to do.

I think the (what shall I call him?) pro-death Aristotelian?

How about the pro-good life Aristotelian. As he says, there is only "perhaps something fine in living by itself, provided that there is no great excess of hardships."

Lydia - it seems that you're prepared just to *dismiss* Aristotelian metaphysics - surely among the greatest advances ever achieved by the mind of man - as no more than a "shtick," simply because it doesn't immediately, or obviously, fit in with your views on currently fashionable political issues.

I wrote at the time of the court battle that it was immoral for her husband to deny her family legal custody. I am apparently so "hateful" that I thought she should be placed with the people who wanted to keep her alive.

I am glad to hear that, Step2. Of course, I think you go wrong here - Some of us think a rational soul is more than a life force, it implies higher brain function - since it seems to imply that matter is the source of mind, and that without it no person is present, in which case it's not clear to me why this non-person should be cared for or kept alive.

I very much agree with Mr. Bourne's "humans have one soul," such that it is nonsensical to think that the rational can be lost, leaving behind the others to carry on. And also very much with Lydia's "I think the...pro-death Aristotelian would have to argue that the long-term comatose patient is a different "kind of thing," which is what I was getting at with 'you can't become what you never were.'

Lydia - it seems that you're prepared just to *dismiss* Aristotelian metaphysics...

Steve, if that's what she were doing, then we'd have to *dismiss* the seriousness of all her previous comments. But that's not what she's doing. And the "fashionable political issue" under discussion is her insistence that severely disabled human beings be called what they are rather than *dismissed* as something suitable for eating. Somehow this seems more important than mere politics.

Lydia - it seems that you're prepared just to *dismiss* Aristotelian metaphysics - surely among the greatest advances ever achieved by the mind of man - as no more than a "shtick," simply because it doesn't immediately, or obviously, fit in with your views on currently fashionable political issues.

Not at all, Steve. You aren't reading carefully. My problems with Aristotelian hylemorphism have _nothing_ to do with this issue. Every word I've said here (about anachronism, etc., etc.) should make that clear. I brought it up in this context only because a) you and Perseus did, and b) I've felt a little philosophically defensive in relation to all my pro-life Thomist friends who evidently think that if you take _my_ position on Phil. of Mind you're specially susceptible to the non-pro-life position on this topic and that if we were all hylemorphists the issue wouldn't even arise. I've always disagreed with them on _that_ point. My position is that _neither_ position in phil. of mind (taken at a fairly generic level) rules out the non-pro-life position. Both need to be elaborated for that, but both can be.

I disagree with hylemorphism for entirely separate philosophical reasons.

Now, as Bill says, if we're speaking about being "dismissive," well--yes, I tend to think the allegedly "vegetable" nature of living human patients is rather more than a mere fashionable political topic.

since it seems to imply that matter is the source of mind, and that without it no person is present...

I think about it in terms of hardware and software. The brain is the hardware and the rational mind is a particularly complex software program.

...in which case it's not clear to me why this non-person should be cared for or kept alive.

If a non-person holds sentimental value for one person and not for another, there is something spiteful about killing or destroying the non-person when they can just as easily be transferred. Before you leap to any conclusions, six months of labor is not an easy transfer.

I very much agree with Mr. Bourne's "humans have one soul," such that it is nonsensical to think that the rational can be lost, leaving behind the others to carry on.

I went looking for the Thomist gloss on Aristotle's delayed ensoulment, and what I found was kind of strange.

We must therefore say that since the generation of one thing is the corruption of another, it follows of necessity that both in men and in other animals, when a more perfect form supervenes the previous form is corrupted: yet so that the supervening form contains the perfection of the previous form, and something in addition. It is in this way that through many generations and corruptions we arrive at the ultimate substantial form, both in man and other animals. This indeed is apparent to the senses in animals generated from putrefaction. We conclude therefore that the intellectual soul is created by God at the end of human generation, and this soul is at the same time sensitive and nutritive, the pre-existing forms being corrupted.

He seems to state that a developing human body can live with less perfect forms that are later replaced by the God-created rational soul. So he would probably agree that once the rational soul is present it cannot decompose back into the preceding forms.

If a non-person holds sentimental value for one person and not for another, there is something spiteful about killing or destroying the non-person when they can just as easily be transferred.

That's nice. So the "non-person" isn't medical waste. He's more like a painting or collectible item. It might have value to someone--sentimental value, for example. Of course, some paintings aren't valued by anyone...

We should not forget what makes this topic so contentious and controversial in the first place. People persist in using poorly thought out and fundamentally arbitrary standards for determining what makes a person human or what makes a human person.

When we speak about abortion, humanity or personhood begins at some arbitrary development point, and when we speak about people in comas we use some level of brain activity. What a hylemorphic anthropology teaches us is that things like natural development and brain activity are lower order potencies that are actualized in virtue of the higher order actuality of the human soul. In other words, I only have potential or actual brain activity because I am already an actually living human being. I grow from being a child into an adult because I am already an actually living human being. The soul is what makes the body a living human body, and murder must always be the murder of a living human body.

All of this goes a long way in demystifying what makes a person human. If they are alive then they are human and deserve to be treated as such. We do not have to speculate about whether or not the soul has left while some semblance of life still remains. I would submit that herein lies the strength of the Thomist position. This is not to say that someone could not use Aristotelian concepts to try to justify the murder of someone in a comatose state, but that this is possible is trivially true and obviously apparent. Anyone can use anything for anything if they have attended modern universities long enough. What we should do is attempt to understand the concepts most fully and draw the most reasonable inferences from them.

I grow from being a child into an adult because I am already an actually living human being.

I would say that is also basic biology and basic common sense. Modern biology even can tell us how it works in some detail. It's true of other organisms as well. Nobody gets tied up in knots about the heavy question of whether an unborn puppy is a canine being. That's because there isn't a powerful political movement pressing to maintain a female dog's right to kill her unborn puppies.

Perhaps a different way to put it would be this: The pro-death person, whether he's considering the unborn child or the person in a coma, knows at some level perfectly well that this is a human being. He just doesn't give a damn. If he then tries to justify the fact that he doesn't give a damn in intellectual terms, we're not dealing with philosophy in any event but with sophistry. The rest of us who aren't doing the sophistry are all on the same side.

I would add, too, that Christian theology does teach that the soul does leave the body at death. It teaches that this is not merely a possibility, logical or otherwise, but an actual fact, an event that does take place. The soul exists disembodied until the resurrection. St. Thomas accepts this as well. Catholics even fit the doctrine of Purgatory into that disembodied period. Our philosophy has to deal with the possibility of disembodied existence in Christian theology. If moral sophists are going to use that fact (that there is such a thing as the soul's leaving the body) for their own wicked purposes, the Christian can't blame some specific philosophy for this, as if things would be better if we _didn't_ believe that the soul can leave the body and exist apart from it; the Christian ought to accept that anyway. So the thing to be done is to argue that it is entirely illicit to try to say that this is happening while the patient is still self-evidently biologically alive.

The brain is the hardware and the rational mind is a particularly complex software program.

I'm afraid this doesn't help much since complex software programs are rational only to the degree that it has been imposed upon them, nor do they display any evidence of free will, self-awareness, a capacity to love, to contemplate the existence of God, to speculate about their possible immortality, or to appreciate the exquisite qualities of Czech lager.

Re Aquinas and his seeming "to state that a developing human body can live with less perfect forms that are later replaced by the God-created rational soul," you know that I consider this complete nonsense and that he was wrong about delayed ensoulment. As some ancient saint said, "That which will become a human being is a human being."

Re the sentimental value of non-persons, ditto Lydia.

Nobody gets tied up in knots about the heavy question of whether an unborn puppy is a canine being.

I haven’t questioned that they are human beings. Did you bother to read my previous comment about that exact subject?

The pro-death person, whether he's considering the unborn child or the person in a coma, knows at some level perfectly well that this is a human being. He just doesn't give a damn. If he then tries to justify the fact that he doesn't give a damn in intellectual terms, we're not dealing with philosophy in any event but with sophistry.

Obviously Aristotle was the greatest sophist in history. That must be why Thomists are so proud to claim his philosophy as the foundation of their own. Seeing as how I’ve always stated that the potency/future-like-ours argument is slightly persuasive and openly admit that nearly every choice made about PVS patients will involve tragedy, at least I've treated pro-life arguments as having some merit. I'm not a humble Christian conservative however, so I don't dismiss all opposing arguments as wicked lies or think that every Cross can be carried.

I'm afraid this doesn't help much since complex software programs are rational only to the degree that it has been imposed upon them, nor do they display any evidence of free will, self-awareness, a capacity to love, to contemplate the existence of God, to speculate about their possible immortality, or to appreciate the exquisite qualities of Czech lager.

You’ll change that tune when Skynet and the Cylons take over :(

..you know that I consider this complete nonsense and that he was wrong about delayed ensoulment.

It says something about reverence that Aquinas could write complete nonsense and still have nearly unquestioned authority. Did you notice that the quote supports your view on the indissolubility of rational souls? It must be incomprehensible to think that he would have only partially agreed with your viewpoint, since only sophists can disagree, but there it is.

Did you notice that the quote supports your view on the indissolubility of rational souls?

Yes I did, and that's a good thing. But his delayed ensoulment is bad. If he is saying that conceived human beings start out with a nutritive soul, then a sensitive one, which are later overlaid with a rational one - if that's what he is saying, it's beyond me how he could. Maybe someone like Feser can explain it, but not I.

It must be incomprehensible to think that he would have only partially agreed with your viewpoint...

Amazing, isn't it? But that appears to be the case.

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