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WHEN IS A PERSON?
PRE-PERSONS AND FORMER PERSONS
By James Park
When is a person?
We are persons when we have the following
four functions:
consciousness, memory, language, and autonomy.
If you are reading
this essay
or understanding it while it is being read
to you,
then it is fairly certain that you are a person
right now.
And the fact that I am writing the essay
proves that I am a person.
Only we human
beings who are presently persons
are capable of raising the question of what
it means to be a person.
As embodied personhood we ask
what makes us different from all other objects
and creatures.
But there was
a time in the life-span of each of us
when we were not yet persons in the full sense.
We cannot remember this time,
since one of the marks of personhood is being
able to remember.
As full persons in the present,
we can look back upon our biological development
and identify a period of time when we were
not yet persons.
And even before
our period of pre-personhood,
we can name the date before which each of
us did not exist at all.
Most of us know the exact day we were born.
And if we subtract 9 months from that date,
we can estimate the date when we were conceived.
But we can never
be as exact about the date
when we moved from pre-personhood to personhood
or when we made the transition from childhood
to adulthood.
And if we decline mentally before we die physically
---if we slowly lose the capacities that now
make us persons---
then observers of this decline
will not be able to name the exact date
when we passed from being persons into
being former persons.
The same
criteria by which we presently affirm
that we are persons apply at both ends of
life:
The four marks of personhood can help us to
identify the period
when we moved from pre-personhood to personhood
and the period when we may move from being
full persons
into being considered former persons by others.
This essay will
suggest four criteria or four sets of questions
that will help us to draw the line between
ourselves in our pre-personhood phase
and ourselves as persons
and later to draw the line between
ourselves as full persons and the former
persons we might become.
We will ask these questions about ourselves
and the people who are closest to us.
No attempt will be made here to establish
tests
of personhood
that might be applied by a group of strangers
such as an institutional ethics committee,
an insurance company, or a government agency.
(Medical ethics
is the context in which the question
"When is a person?" is raised,
but if our criteria are careful and comprehensive,
they should also be philosophically valid
for distinguishing persons from animals and
from computers.)
In the practice
of medical ethics,
the question "Is So-and-So still a person?"
will be asked by persons responsible for making
medical decisions for others who cannot decide
for themselves.
For example, is a human fetus a person?
How that question is answered affects one's
choices about abortion.
And the millions of women who have had abortions
since 1972
(when it became legal in the United States)
might ask themselves "what did I abort?"
Is a newborn
a person?
Clearly most newborns will grow into persons,
but some are born defective physically and/or
mentally.
In choosing for a defective newborn,
should the parents consider it to be a person
or a pre-person?
And if we slip
out of personhood before we die,
others will be called upon to make all decisions
for us,
including our medical decisions
---which might include decisions that will
end our lives.
How do we draw
the line between persons and former persons?
In all medical decisions, keep strangers
out of the loop.
Only those persons most closely related to
the human in question
should have the responsibility to decide for
that individual.
Professional experts from all disciplines
can offer their opinions,
but the final decisions must rest with the
lay persons
who are responsible for the future of the
human being in question.
In the case of
fetuses and newborns,
the obvious persons to make medical decisions
are the parents.
And they may decide to invite other family-members
or friends
to help them make difficult choices.
At the other
end of life, the decisions-makers are not so obvious.
Thus, I suggest that each of us (while still
a full person)
appoint a proxy, two proxies, or a committee
of proxies
to make medical decisions for us when we are
no longer capable.
The most formal
way to do this
is to appoint a Medical Care Decisions Committee
(MCDC)
in one's advance directive for medical care
('living will').
In some states this is accomplished by designating
an individual
as one's health-care agent by giving that
person
a durable power of attorney for health care.
("Durable" here means that it lasts beyond
the competence
of the person who appoints the agent.)
When we appoint
our proxies or establish our MCDCs,
we should also give them written guidance
concerning how to make medical decisions for
us.
Since we cannot foresee all possible medical
problems
and their proposed treatments, we must rely
on the compassionate judgment of the proxies
we choose.
A. When Does a Child Become an Adult?
Before we attempt
to draw the lines between
pre-persons/persons and between persons/former
persons,
let us turn to a more familiar distinction
---drawing the line between child/adult.
If we are now adults, we were once children.
But when did this transition occur?
And if we become
parents, we will confront the question again
when our children claim the rights and responsibilities
of adulthood.
How we
handle this more familiar distinction
may help us to face the more difficult and
unfamiliar question
of drawing the line between pre-persons/persons
and between full persons/former persons.
This new distinction has become necessary
only since the advent of modern medicine and
technology.
Only in the 20th century did it become necessary
to ask
when a human becomes a person or ceases to
be a person.
This is because many pre-persons and former
persons
can be kept 'alive' indefinitely by life-support
machinery.
In earlier centuries, most would have died
because there was no way to sustain them
if their bodies could not sustain themselves.
In the process
of deciding when a child becomes an adult,
we immediately find ourselves asking two background
questions:
1. Who is drawing the line?
2. For what purpose is the line being drawn?
(These same questions
will reappear
when we attempt to distinguish between pre-persons/persons
and between full persons/former persons:
1. Who is responsible for drawing the line?
2. Why is the distinction required?)
Unless we know
who is drawing the line and why,
we will not be able to decide when children
become adults.
In every known culture,
children have different rights and responsibilities
from adults.
But children enter adulthood at different
ages,
depending on the rights and responsibilities
being considered.
Here are some
historical examples of drawing the line
between the end of childhood and the beginning
of adulthood:
The end of
innocence, the beginning of moral responsibility:
When does a child become morally responsible
for his/her acts?
In the Roman Catholic tradition,
a child is capable of committing a mortal
sin at 7 years of age.
In Judaism adulthood begins at age 13.
Generally, we think of children becoming responsible
for their acts
somewhere between 7 and 12 years of age.
Driving age:
Depending on the state, we regard children
as old enough to drive
automobiles and farm machinery when they reach
15-18 years of age.
School-leaving
age:
Children are adult enough to drop out of school
at about age 16.
Age
of consent for sex:
Children are adult enough to decide their
own sexual behavior
somewhere between 15-18 years of age.
Thus under most state laws,
when a child below the age of consent has
sex with an adult,
it is entirely the responsibility of the adult.
This is "statutory rape" or child sexual abuse,
even if the child verbally gave 'consent'.
Drinking and
smoking age:
Each society that controls the consumption
of alcohol and tobacco
defines the age at which a person is responsible
enough
to make informed decisions about the use of
these substances.
In the United States, the drinking age is
controlled by the states.
And state legislatures have frequently changed
the age,
depending on the mood of the citizens and
other social factors.
Generally, it has been between 18 and 21 years
of age.
Voting age:
Persons become old enough to vote when they
reach 18 to 21,
depending on the country and the period of
history.
Age of marriage
without parental consent:
Children are old enough to enter the adult
institution of marriage
when they reach 18-21, depending on the jurisdiction.
And in some cultures (especially those with
arranged marriages)
children can be married at much younger ages,
but they still do not become full adults until
somewhat later.
Draft age:
Males have been deemed old enough to fight
at about 18.
Adult criminal
responsibility:
When persons are still children,
their Parents are often held responsible for
their misbehavior.
And the criminal acts of children are dealt
with in different courts
with different rules of procedure and different
penalties.
(But sometimes the crime itself is serious
enough
for the child to be certified as an adult
and tried in adult court.)
Children found guilty are sent to juvenile
correctional facilities.
And when they become adult (at 18), they are
often released.
Newer laws keep juveniles found guilty of
serious crimes
behind bars a bit longer, even after they
have become adults.
Contract capacity:
Generally persons are able to enter into contracts
for work and borrowing, etc. when they reach
age 18.
(For many years in the United States, the
age of majority was 21.)
Contracts for children below the age of majority
must be co-signed by a parent or guardian.
Age
for borrowing without a co-signer:
When lending institutions lend large sums
of money
(for a car or a house, for instance), they
generally require
a co-signer if the borrower is younger than
20-25.
Experience has shown lenders that young adults
are poor risks.
So they require other adult signers to back
up such loans.
Age for adult
auto insurance rates:
Insurance companies have learned that young
adults are bad risks,
because they have more accidents than older
adults.
Thus (especially males) must pay higher insurance
premiums
until they reach about age 25.
Age for being
President:
The writers of the US Constitution decided
that a man
(later women were also allowed to vote and
hold office)
had to be 35 years of age to be mature enough
to govern the country.
The fact that
the line between child and adult has been drawn
anywhere between age 7 and age 35 shows lack
of consensus
about just when a person ceases being a child
and becomes an adult.
Much of this variation can be accounted for
by the fact
that different responsibilities are being
assumed by these people.
A child of 7 may be responsible for making
personal moral decisions.
But that person would not be trusted to make
Presidential decisions.
Each family has
its own, informal turning points in a young life:
When is a child old enough to stay out after
midnight?
When is a child old enough to wash the dishes
and take responsibility for other household
tasks?
When is a child old enough to have sex?
When old enough to drive the family car?
When is a girl old enough to put on make-up
and wear a bra?
In most of these
parent/child struggles,
the parents make the final decisions.
But they should take the maturity of each
child into account.
Courts of law
also hear status questions.
Lawyers often ask courts to make exceptions
to general rules
defining when minors become adults,
for instance, concerning large legacies.
At the other end of life, the mental competence
of someone
who makes a will may be challenged
by relatives who do not agree its contents.
The detractors may argue that the drawer was
incompetent,
under undue influence, did not know what he
or she was signing, etc.
And the
state legislatures are constantly asked to change the age
at which children become adult for various
purposes.
Seeing the difficulty
of defining when a child becomes an adult,
we should not be surprised to discover that
it is even more difficult
to draw the line between pre-persons/full
persons
and between full persons/former persons.
Medical decisions
are often more permanent than
decisions to grant an individual adult rights
and responsibilities.
Status as an adult may be postponed if the
individual does not seem
quite mature enough for the responsibility
considered,
but such line-drawing almost never results
in death.
But when we consider
whether a certain individual
is a person or a former person,
how we draw the line could result in a medical
decision
that will result in death rather than continued
treatment.
Various opinions
about when personhood begins and ends
probably should not be written into any guidelines
or laws.
This question is highly individual
and deeply affected by cultural differences
---just like the question of when a child
becomes an adult.
Such questions will always be open to significant
debate.
And with respect to each individual,
all relevant views should be heard.
This is a moral rather than a legal discussion.
And the law should remain neutral about moral
matters,
allowing each family to create its own definitions
and to apply them to their own family members.
Laws and formal
guidelines can set the broad limits
concerning mandatory behavior and prohibited
behavior,
but the wide area between these two
is the area of individual medical discretion.
All laws and guidelines are based on a broad
consensus
of the society that created them.
But an open society such as our own
will leave a wide range of options between
the outer limits.
(A closed society may be defined as one with
no choices:
Everything that is not mandatory is prohibited.
But sometimes advocates of certain moral position
in our own society
would like to enshrine their own moral choice
in the laws
so that everyone would be required to behave
that way.
But open societies have successfully resisted
legislating morality.
We should also
guard against the assumptions of
generic medical ethics.
Largely because most of us were raised with
a belief
that there must be a right or a wrong in every
situation,
we may assume this applies to medical decisions
as well.
And many writers of medical ethics assume
the same thing:
They look for a consensus among ethical thinkers
and take that to be the correct choice for
everyone.
But as our society
becomes more pluralistic and multi-cultural,
the consensus that used to uphold generic
medical ethics disappears.
Now people approach life-and-death questions
with diverse personal, philosophical, and
religious beliefs.
And even religious
organizations that used to have rigid positions
now realize that there should be a range of
freedom within that faith.
So the criteria
to be suggested in the rest of this essay
are presented to a pluralistic and multi-cultural
world.
Once we have received all the scientific facts
and medical opinions
relevant to the choices we must make,
we must make our own medical dedisions
based on our own values and beliefs.
In each culture,
the written law defines the limits of choice.
But within these limits of what is required
or prohibited,
each group of decision-makers operates by
its own moral principles.
And precisely because of this diversity of
opinion on medical matters,
it is very important for each of us
to create our own Medical Care Decisions Committee,
which will have the power to make medical
decisions for us
when we are no longer able to decide for ourselves
or when we can no longer communicate our choices.
When is a person?
We are persons when we are conscious of the
world
and conscious of ourselves.
The consciousness
that defines persons recognizes itself.
Only when we are conscious can we ask about
consciousness.
You are conscious as you read these words.
And I am conscious as I write them.
Neither of us is asleep. And neither
of us is dead.
The first level
of consciousness is sense experience.
We see what is visible around us.
We hear whatever is loud enough to be detected
by our ears.
We smell things when enough molecules enter
our noses.
We taste things that we put into our mouths.
And we feel whatever we touch with our skin.
Each of these
five senses happens
because we have specialized sense organs connected
to our brains.
And our brains organize our sensory input
into intelligible patterns.
All animals have
the same five senses.
And some animals have more acute senses than
we have.
Thus when we
say that consciousness is a mark of personhood,
we must mean more than sense perception and
organization.
If being aware of the world were a sufficient
definition of a person,
then every living dog and cat would be a person.
What marks off
personal consciousness from animal awareness
is sensitivity to ourselves---self-consciousness.
Not only do we notice the world around us,
but we notice that we notice.
We experience ourselves as receivers of
sense impressions
and organizing centers for interpreting
that sense data.
We do not need
to be very intelligent to respond to the world
in ways that show that we are aware of ourselves.
As soon as we experience our selves
as centers of experience that can be affected
by the world
(and later as centers of activity that can
affect the world)
we have begun to emerge as self-aware personal
beings.
Our earliest manifestations of self-awareness
are feelings.
When we become aware that we are hungry, cold,
hot, in pain, etc.,
we notice ourselves as organisms separate
from the rest of the world.
Later we can experience ourselves as happy,
bored, fearful, jealous.
We have sense
experiences before we understand them
and before we have any control over what happens
to us.
But as babies we learn to cry as a way of
changing the world.
When we learn that crying is communication
with others,
we are beginning to become self-conscious.
Later we will
develop a better-organized sense of ourselves.
We will be able to identify ourselves, to
say "I am I".
We will be able to name ourselves
and respond when others use our names.
We will know who we are at some rudimentary
level.
A. The Wink Test for Infant Self-Consciousness.
When does self-consciousness
emerge in babies?
Even before birth a fetus is aware of its
surroundings in various ways.
But just when a baby becomes aware of itself
is not immediately clear.
However, anyone
can try this simple experiment---the wink test:
When you have a baby's attention, wink at
it.
If the baby attempts to wink back, it must
be aware that it exists
and that it is another person like the one
winking at it.
Usually the baby
will close both eyes at once,
since it has not learned how to close one
eye at a time.
But the fact that the child has tried to wink
shows that the baby has recognized you
as another creature like itself, with eyes
just like its own.
The baby's mind has made the connection between
the holes thru which it sees the world and
other people's eyes.
And the infant is attempting to imitate a
behavior it has seen.
The imitation
of winking is essentially different
from most other forms of imitation.
When an infant attempts to imitate the actions
of human hands or feet,
it does so by seeing the hands and feet of
other people
and seeing it own hands and feet.
The similarities of form and function soon
become obvious.
But the infant
cannot see its own eyes.
Few infants spend much time gazing into mirrors.
And if we want to be completely scientific
about this test,
we will check infants who have never seen
themselves in a mirror.
If they still have the impulse to wink back,
they must be aware that they also are creatures
with eyes that can wink.
If
we try the wink test on household pets, we get no response.
The dog or the cat will continue to blink
spontaneously,
but there will be no effort to respond with
a wink.
(If a movie-maker causes an animal to wink,
the effect would be uncanny.
We would immediately recognize self-consciousness
in the animal.
The story might be that a human person was
turned into a frog.
And the frog retains self-consciousness,
which it communicates by winking.)
Animals, even
after many years of visual experience,
never realize that their eyes enable them
to see the world.
Animal consciousness seems to be only consciousness
of the world,
never consciousness of itself as a self.
(Some people will dispute this observation.
Let them devise experiments to show that animals
may be self-aware.)
When animals
see themselves in mirrors,
they usually attempt to go behind the mirror
to find the other animal.
If an animal notices that the image in the
mirror its itself,
this shows some level of self-awareness.
An animal might become aware that its behavior
(as experienced from the inside as the agent
of that behavior)
is the same as the observed behavior of the
animal in the mirror.
Higher primates do understand their reflections
in mirrors.
This has been shown by putting a dab of paint
on their foreheads
(without them knowing it)
and then watching to see how they respond
when they see themselves in a mirror.
If they 'instinctively' touch their own foreheads,
we know that they have made the connection
between
the image of the animal in the mirror and
their own foreheads.
It is possible
that such higher animals could be trained
to pass the wink test by getting them to close
just one eye
when they observe such a signal from a human
being,
but this would be very different
from an infant attempting to wink without
any training.
To understand
the full significance of the wink test,
we must make explicit the difference between
winking
and blinking.
Blinking is a spontaneous reflex action,
which takes place in all animals with eyes
like ours.
It is nature's way of keeping our eyes clear
of dust, etc.
Babies have observed blinking for as
long as they have seen eyes.
Human eyes automatically blink about once
a second.
You may have blinked at least once while reading
this line.
But because blinking happens all the time,
you did not notice it until I brought it to
your attention.
A
baby sees thousands of blinks before it sees its first wink.
And the baby notices something different is
happening:
This time only one eye closed, not both together.
Winking is a new and unusual phenomenon in
its world.
And if the infant is beginning to emerge as
a self-aware person,
it will attempt to do the same with its eyes.
Animals have
no such self-awareness.
They do not notice the difference between
a blink and a wink.
You can wink at your cat all day.
And it will only become bored and move on
to something else.
But a self-aware infant immediately recognizes
the difference
between a wink (a voluntary action)
and a blink (an involuntary reflex).
Passing the wink
test by attempting to wink back
shows that the infant is aware of these basic
facts about itself:
I am a being with eyes just like the person
who is winking at me.
And if this other person can close just one
eye at a time, so can I.
For most animals,
winking remains just another event to observe.
winking faces are no more notable than blinking
faces.
Since infants
are blinking all the time spontaneously,
we must be careful to observe
if the infant is voluntarily attempting
to close one eye at a time.
Even tho it may not be able to manage to close
only one eye,
we can usually tell that it is trying
because the effort manifest in attempting
to wink
is different from spontaneous blinking.
Parents must
be especially on their guard against self-deception.
Most parents hope that their children will
be very intelligent.
And some pet-owners believe that their pets
are very smart.
Parents and pet-owners may see non-existent
signs of intelligence.
At first every
baby is an organism, like any other animal.
It reacts to its environment with ever-increasing
complexity.
After a while it begins to distinguish between
world and me.
For instance, when the baby plays with its
fingers and toes,
it is surprised at first to discover that
these other moving objects
are parts of the same sensory system, itself.
The baby feels its toes from both sides.
Thru random movements of its limbs,
the baby gradually discovers what is me and
what is not me.
If a baby fails to develop this capacity
to distinguish itself from others, we should
be seriously concerned.
Some babies are born defective or are later
injured
so that they never gain significant self-consciousness.
In some extreme
cases, babies are born anencephalic
---without most of their brains.
They never experience a moment of consciousness.
And such babies will never develop the other
capacities of personhood,
which depend on consciousness---memory, language,
and autonomy.
The wink test
may also be useful at the other end of life
---when an individual may have sunk into a
post-personal existence.
Because our eyes are located in our heads,
even if we become paralyzed below the neck,
we will still be able to blink and wink.
Blinking shows that we still have reflexes
coming from our brain-stems.
But if we are still able to wink,
it means that we are still conscious and self-conscious.
In fact, our
ability to wink voluntarily
may be one of our last means of communication.
A former person in a persistent vegetative
state
will spend part of each day with his or her
eyes open and blinking.
But there will be no responsive winks to the
winks of other persons.
Individuals in PVS are not self-conscious.
So they will not even be able to wink back
when a wink takes place right in front of
their eyes.
But if a patient
still has the capacity to wink voluntarily,
then the two eyes can become a new means of
communication.
The right eye can mean "yes"; and the left
eye "no".
The patient could
even learn Morse Code,
the right eye being used for dots and the
left for dashes.
Care-givers and family would also have to
learn Morse Code.
But even this slow communication would be
better than none.
And the message should be written down as
it is sent
to confirm or correct it as it is being transmitted.
And if the patient
becomes skilled at winking communication,
a Morse Code reader or interpreter might be
needed
for receiving and de-coding longer messages.
Just as animals
never become as self-conscious as persons,
so computers do not meet the test of self-awareness
either.
A computer is
an electronic machine
that contains millions of bits of information.
It can rearrange and deduce certain conclusions
from this information.
In fact, computers generally perform such
calculative functions
much better and faster than the human minds
that invented them.
But is a computer
conscious or self-conscious?
To be self-conscious means to be able to grasp
one's being whole,
to comprehend oneself in a moment.
Thus understood, a computer has no self;
it is just the sum of the information and
functions it contains.
It cannot have attitudes or feelings about
itself.
It cannot identify or name itself.
It has no whole sense of itself that it can
grasp in an instant.
It has no emotional responses to situations
in which it finds itself.
It cannot predict its own results.
Instead of jumping ahead to a conclusion intuitively,
it must just go ahead with its calculations
as programmed.
A computer is not essentially changed
when information or functions are added or
taken away.
But persons are changed by their thoughts
and experiences.
(Reading this paragraph may have changed you
in some small way.)
A computer can 'learn' from the facts that
are fed into it.
But it will never graduate from being a computer.
Persons can rise to ever higher levels of
personhood.
A computer has
no core identity as a person has.
It is only the wiring and electronic components
that make it up
---and the electronically encoded instructions
in its memory.
When it 'thinks', it processes one piece of
information at a time,
sometimes using parallel processors to do
several things at once.
But its 'thought' processes lack creativity
and purpose.
Its only function is to complete the project
assigned.
When that calculation is completed, it is
only a machine, waiting.
A computer has
no will of its own
to go off in different directions to explore
unexpected connections,
as happens when you read this essay.
These side-trips happen because you are a
person.
You come to this essay with interests and
purposes of your own.
And you find connections of ideas worth pursuing
that were not put before your eyes by these
words.
C. What about a Sleeping Person?
When we call
consciousness the primary feature of personhood,
we must insert the exception for sleeping
persons.
Normally we human beings spend 1/3 of our
lives unconscious.
Every night all of the processes of consciousness
are suspended.
Sense experience ends; all mental organizing
ceases.
But when we awake in the morning,
we can continue the same thoughts we had the
day before.
We remember who we are and what day of the
week it is.
And we begin to think of the activities of
the forthcoming day.
However, if a
person falls asleep and never awakens,
then that permanent unconsciousness will eventually
be considered
as the death of that person for all practical
purposes.
I have instructed
my Medical Care Decisions Committee
to regard me as permanently dead
if I have been unconscious for a year.
And if it is clear even before a year has
passed
that I will never regain consciousness,
I should be declared dead even sooner.
If I have become
unconscious
and I cannot be awakened to resume my purposes
in life,
then I should be considered dead as a person,
whatever the condition of my other bodily
functions.
Or if I am constantly
in a dream-like state,
where I cannot tell the difference between
my internally-created images and the facts
of the real world,
then also my status as a full person is seriously
in doubt.
Perhaps I have become a former person.
When I am awake,
I recognize myself and remember my purposes.
I know how to get myself out of bed and get
dressed.
I know how to resume my daily activities.
But toward the
end of my life
---if I lose my mental capacities before death---
I may drift in and out of consciousness.
There may be times when I know who I am
and other times when my self-consciousness
is confused.
If I can no longer understand the patterns
of the familiar world,
then I am losing my normal capacities of consciousness.
While I am fully awake, others easily interact
with me.
We all appreciate the connections we have
made as persons.
But if my powers of consciousness begin to
fail,
others who have known me when I was a person
may rightly say that I am "out of it".
They will be able to say that I have become
a former person
when the activities we used to share are no
longer possible.
It might feel like a dream-state from which
I cannot fully awaken.
D. Common-Sense Definitions of Consciousness.
We all know what
it means to be conscious or unconscious.
When a patient does not wake up,
doctors may be able to explain why the patient
remains in a coma.
But everyone will agree that the patient is
unconscious.
Thus I have assigned
to my Medical Care Decision Committee
the responsibility for deciding whether I
am conscious.
They will obviously seek the best medical
advice and opinion
about what might have caused my unconsciousness
and about what might happen to me in the future.
But it should be obvious to all that I am
not awake.
And if there seems little chance that I will
recover consciousness,
I should be declared dead
and my remains should be used as I have instructed.
Here are a few
simple, practical tests that anyone can use:
(1) Is the patient aware of pain?
(2) Does the patient appear to hear and respond
to sounds?
(3) Does the patient turn away from strong,
unpleasant smells?
(4) Does the patient react to substances placed
on the tongue?
(5) Does the patient notice bright lights
and respond to them?
If these five senses are not working, then
the patient is unconscious.
On the interpersonal
level, we can ask the following questions:
(1) Does the patient know himself or herself?
(2) Does the patient recognize other persons
known for many years?
(3) Is the patient pleased when others show
care and concern?
(4) Does the patient notice whether others
are present or not?
Doctors also know about all of these tests
for consciousness.
And they have many others which are more sophisticated
---some involving complex machinery
that will determine if anything is happening
in the patient's brain.
Neurologists have several ways to measure
and map blood-flow
to various areas of the brain.
If parts of the brain are deprived of blood,
they quickly die.
No further functions can be expected from
those areas.
Other instruments can measure and map the
brain's electrical activity.
An electroencephalograph will show where the
brain is working
and where it may have ceased working, perhaps
because of a stroke.
Different brain-waves can show the difference
between
a sleeping brain and a thinking brain.
Such technical means can show whether or not
a brain is conscious.
If there is no blood-flow to the cerebellum,
the patient is unconscious.
And if the neurologist can determine that
blood-flow will not return,
then the patient will not regain consciousness.
The electrical tests may also enable the neurologist
to predict whether consciousness will ever
return.
If everyone agrees
that the patient is unconsciousness,
and if the doctors say there is little hope
of consciousness returning,
then that patient has become a former person
because the other marks of personhood
(memory, language, & autonomy) depend
on consciousness.
QUESTIONS FOR PROXIES
ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
Beyond what a
neurologist can determine
by various tests of the functions of the brain,
the people who have known the individual in
question for a long time
may recognize changes in personality or consciousness
that indicate the loss of mental powers.
The following questions
should be asked by people
who have known the individual for a number
of years.
These friends and family members will be in
the best position
to notice changes in levels of conscious functioning.
If the individual was clearly a person during
most of his or her life,
some elements of that person's mental life
may have disappeared.
When such losses become extensive enough,
we say that the individual in question has
become a former person.
Just where to draw the line will always be
subjective.
And the others who have known the individual
in the fullness of life
are best prepared to evaluate these losses.
When reading the following questions for proxies,
we might put our own names in the blanks and
adjust the pronouns.
We might imagine these questions being read
and discussed
by the members of our own Medical Care Decisions
Committees (MCDCs).
The questions should stimulate meaningful
discussion,
rather than be given simple yes/no answers.
The bold face question introduce major sub-divisions.
1. Has _____'s thinking become rigid
and inflexible?
2. Does _____ seem to be 'closing down'
as a person?
3. Do we notice increased reluctance
to experience new things?
4. Does _____ decline invitations
he/she would
have been accepted in an earlier phase of life?
5. Does _____ wish to turn off the TV
or radio
because new
information is always upsetting?
6. Is novelty no longer welcome because
it is traumatic?
7. Does _____ resist change in all forms?
8. Does _____ require routines to proceed
in the same order?
9. Does _____ only welcome familiar
thoughts and experiences?
10. Is there a loss of a former richness of
thought and experience?
11. If _____ used to welcome new events and
experiences,
has this
openness been replaced by closedness?
12. Does _____ become upset
by unexpected
input and communications from other people?
13. Does _____ cling to familiar and comfortable
routines?
14. Does _____ resist change even tho some
suggested changes
would
clearly be in his/her best interest?
15. Has _____'s mind become set into rigid
patterns
suggesting
unwillingness ever to change again?
16. If _____ was an avid reader, has this
practice been given up
because
new ideas are no longer welcome in his/her mind?
17. Have our conversations with _____ fallen
into a repeating pattern,
the same
basic conversations takes place over and over again?
18. Does _____ remember saying the same things
before?
These questions
about openness to new experiences
must be asked by others who have known the
individual for some years
because some people have been rigid all their
lives.
Even if they were closed-minded and dogmatic,
they were still persons.
If they have always resisted change,
then many of the above questions would not
indicate
a deterioration of their mental lives.
Only a change
in a once open, flexible, and curious person
into a closed-minded, inflexible, and non-curious
individual
might be a sign of the hardening of a formerly
rich mental life.
Such a change in myself, for instance, would
definitely be a sign
that my mind was beginning to deteriorate
and shut down.
That would indicate that I am moving toward
becoming a former person.
19. How well is _____ oriented in time?
20. When _____ awakens,
does he/she
know what day of the week it is?
21. What month of the year?
22. What season of the year?
23. What year?
24. Does _____ know how old he/she is?
25. Does _____ sometimes forget whether it
is morning or afternoon?
26. Does _____ have a reasonable sense of
the passage of the day?
27. Is _____'s personality continuous and
consistent?
28. Does _____ experience himself/herself
as the
same person who lived many years ago?
29. Is there a continuity of memory or do
some of the memories
seem to
be events that happened in a movie---to someone else?
30. When moved to a different living arrangement,
does _____
seem to
be the same person who existed in the former location?
31. Does _____ have a continuing concept of
himself/herself?
32. Does _____'s sense of self today connect
clearly with a self
that existed
at some time in the past in a different place?
33. Is _____'s self independent of time and
place?
34. Or does _____ seem to be a new or different
self over time
or when
moved to a new location?
35. Has _____'s distinctive personality
disappeared?
36. Has _____'s personality flattened out?
37. Has _____ lost some of the characteristics
that used
to make him/her different from other people?
38. Has it become difficult for health-care
workers
to distinguish
_____from the other patients?
39. Has _____ faded into the "patient population"?
40. Has _____ become anonymous---lost his/her
name---
and become
better known by a room number?
41. Is _____ aware of being different from
other individuals?
42. Does _____ know his/her difference from
others from the inside,
not merely
different in external facts and appearance?
43. Does _____ recognize himself/herself as
different
from every
other individual who has ever lived?
44. Or has _____ begun to identify himself/herself
as part
of a group rather than as an individual?
45. Has _____ begun to forget who he/she was,
remembering
"the past"
as events that might have happened to others?
When is a person?
We are persons when we possess the power of
memory.
Memory---being
able to recall past experiences and learning---
distinguishes persons from all other creatures.
As our memories become fuller and more useful,
we become more complete persons.
And as our memories begin to fade,
we lose the characteristics that made us interesting
persons.
Almost all of
us can remember what we did in the last five minutes.
You were probably reading this essay five
minutes ago.
And if you can't remember at least some ideas
from the previous page,
then you might as well give up reading now:
The ideas are leaking out the bottom of your
brain
as fast as they are coming in at the top.
And we probably
all remember what we did in the last 24 hours.
Human memory goes even farther back, of course:
We remember last week, last month, last year,
and probably several years back into the past.
As we go farther
back, memory dims.
We may remember only important or traumatic
events from childhood.
And we may re-discover memories in dreams
that we had forgotten in our waking moments.
Our human memories differ from computer memories.
A computer can remember even the most trivial
information forever.
But we human beings must have reasons
for remembering things.
Also, we remember
in different ways from computers.
The computer keeps all the raw data just as
it was fed in.
But we persons remember events as meanings.
And we almost never retain the details of
the raw data.
If the experience was not interpreted and
processed at the time,
it is probably lost forever from our memories.
But, of course, we now have many other ways
besides memory
for retaining important facts from the past.
Another proof
that human memory works by meanings
is the impossibility of remembering something
we heard in a foreign language.
A tape recorder could record every syllable.
But our human minds remember only the sound
of foreign speech.
And when we were first born, all languages
were foreign to us.
Until we acquired our first language, our
minds retained nothing verbal.
Likewise, when we first opened our eyes,
we were assaulted with millions of rays of
light
---all meaningless to us since we could not
make sense of them.
And without organizing patterns for understanding
visual impressions,
we forgot whatever came into our brains thru
our eyes.
When our memories began to work,
we recognized repeats in what we saw
and heard.
These formed patterns in our brains
so that we could recognize
such sights and sounds when they came around
again.
And because this
capacity for recognizing patterns
must develop very early in life,
babies born blind or deaf who gain these senses
later in life
sometimes never become as adept at remembering
and understanding
as those who started to form these patterns
shortly after birth.
Babies born blind
but not deaf, of course,
develop better-than-normal memories for voices
and sounds,
since that is the way their minds were first
organized.
Likewise, babies
born deaf but not blind
usually develop more acute visual discriminations,
since that was the first way their
minds were organized.
Important memories
are also found in animals,
but, interestingly enough, their memories
are often organized by smell.
Even years later, they can remember a person
or a place by its smell.
For example, fish find the stream where they
were spawned
when their olfactory nerves tell them "this
is home".
However, the
family dog will have no response
to a picture of its long-dead master.
But we humans are often flooded by memories
when we see a picture from childhood.
Our personal
memories make us special persons.
In large part, we are the sum of our memories
---the collection (in our brains) of everything
we have learned and experienced since we were
born.
And if we lose these memories,
we become either other persons or former persons.
A. Memory in the Life-Cycle:
The Dawning and the Darkening of Memory.
After birth,
a baby's brain develops very quickly.
Very soon the baby notices similarities between
what it sees now
and something that happened earlier in the
day or some previous day.
Recognizing the special people in its life
may be one of the first signs of memory in
a child.
(If the previous
paragraph made you remember something
from your childhood or the first years of
your children,
this shows how words can evoke memories.)
In the first
few months of life, infants are easily distracted
because they lack purposeful attention and
memory.
Before we became full persons, our memories
were rather random.
Odd bits of information stuck in our minds,
but other events sliped thru our memories
as quickly as they happened.
Why do we remembered some events from childhood
and not others?
As children we
were easily distracted from whatever we were doing.
Something new always seemed more interesting
than something old.
Older children sometimes take advantage of
younger children
because they are so easily distracted from
whatever they are doing.
When the baby is offered a new toy,
the old toy drops to the floor as if it did
not exist.
And young children
have difficulty
foreseeing the importance of putting toys
away in their proper places
so that they can be found when they are wanted
again.
When memory is poorly developed, the child
lacks continuity thru time.
Life comes to the baby as a series of moments
---perhaps the way life happens to animals
even in their adult years.
But as the baby gains the power of memory,
its life becomes more organized and purposeful.
Organized memory
emerges slowly in infants.
For instance, we do not expect infants
to remember stories read from a book.
An infant lacks the necessary system of concepts
in its mind
to make sense of what it hears and hence to
remember it.
The infant's sensory organs may be working
perfectly,
but the storage and retrieval system is still
under development.
Memory
works only when sensory input makes sense to us
---when we have some reason for remembering
something.
Even as adults, most of what we perceive every
day is forgotten.
We have no reason to store everything that
happens to us.
But an infant remembers even less because
it has
no means of distinguishing the trivial from
the important.
Much of what
a baby remembers is short-term memory,
what it needs for its survival.
As adults we may remember little from our
childhood years.
But while we were there, we clearly did remember
what was important.
But if there
were a baby that did not remember any experiences,
we would decide that it is extremely retarded.
Animals are expected to remember only a few
rudimentary things.
But since we human beings remember so much,
we naturally expect persons to have
functioning memories.
By the time we
become adults,
we have taken in and remembered uncountable
bits of information,
most of which is stored in our brains with
instant access.
When we are called upon to remember the value
of pi,
we remember instantly that it is 3.14,
even if we have never used this value.
That is an example of rote memory,
perhaps not related to anything meaningful
in our experience.
And as we lose
our abilities to call up information as needed,
we remember that we used to remember the facts
that are now lost.
We may notice and mourn the loss of our quick
memories when young.
And if we lose a large part of our functioning
memories,
others may question whether we are still full
persons.
Victims of amnesia
do not forget most of what they learned in life.
They remember how to talk, how to understand
their native language,
most of the abstract things they learned in
school, etc.
But they have forgotten specific periods of
their lives.
They may forget who they are.
This may have been caused by a psychological
trauma,
which made it painful to remember that period
of their lives.
Later they may regain access to the closed
parts of their memories.
If we suffer
a stroke or some other brain injury,
we may forget large parts of what we felt
we knew forever.
But because human memories are stored everywhere
in the brain
---rather than filed chronologically or categorically,
as in a computer or library---some pieces
of memory always remain.
But if
an injury or disease causes us permanent memory loss,
then we may be diminished as persons so severely
that we no longer remember what was important
to us earlier in life.
For instance,
if a stroke rendered me incapable
of understanding and using English,
then my life as a philosopher would be completely
over.
I would then have lost everything I learned
thru the medium of language.
And in a deep sense, I would be a different
person---or former person.
If we live long
enough, all of us will experience some memory loss.
We should notice it ourselves first, but if
it becomes severe enough,
those around us who know what we used to remember
will be able to notice just how much we have
forgotten.
Sometimes such memory losses are temporary.
Maybe there are certain times (such as later
in the day or evening)
when our memories dim.
But when our full powers of memory return,
we feel relieved that memories temporarily
lost
have now become accessible to us once again.
Until recent
years, it was usual for memories to last until death.
For most of the years of the human species,
physical death followed quickly after mental
death.
But now medical technology empowers us to
keep a body 'alive'
after the person has ceased to be.
Most of us may
hope that our bodies will not be kept 'alive'
after our memories (and perhaps other mental
powers) are gone.
Instead of needlessly extending the process
of dying,
when the mind and its memories are gone,
we should probably let go of the body.
Each of us should
leave instructions in an advance directive
stating how we would want to be treated if
we lose our memories, etc.
And as a whole
society we need to be more accepting of death,
more ready for the natural termination that
will come to us all.
Others will be able to accept our deaths as
well
if we have set up procedures in advance
that will enable others to manage our deaths.
Usually, managing death means postponing
it as long as possible.
But perhaps that emphasis should shift toward
accepting death,
now that we have become so successful in extending
life.
B. If I Lose My Memory, I Will Be a Former Person.
Right now as
I look back on more than half a century of life,
I do not remember most of the things that
happened to me.
But I have no problems remembering the most
important events.
I spent some
years in college, for instance,
studying mathematics, chemistry, physics,
etc.
But since I have not used most this learning
for more than 30 years,
I have forgotten almost all of it.
I have no idea how to solve a differential
equation,
even tho I studied how to do that for at least
one quarter.
I suspect that I could re-learn such subjects
easily,
but I have no inclination to pursue them.
I leave such matters to those interested in
science and mathematics.
When I turned
from science to philosophy,
I no longer kept up with scientific developments,
but I think that I am a better philosopher
because of my solid grounding in the natural
sciences.
If and when I
begin to forget matters important to me now,
then I may be declining as a person.
And others who observe this decline
may be in better position to evaluate me because
I may lose perspective on myself as I lose
my mental powers.
I may even enter a 'second childhood'.
I will be like
a child again
if I lose my organizing memory and personality.
The self that now writes these words may disappear
before I die.
Life may just roll over me as a series of
disconnected experiences.
My mind may shift from one subject to another
like 'surfing the channels' on a television
set.
And if I forget what is important to me now,
there will be no reason to remember one thing
rather than another.
If I enter 'second
childhood', my memories will be mostly out of date.
Even now, my dreams are usually set in my
childhood home.
If I become senile, is dreaming the way I
will feel even when awake?
Will I become lost on the street because the
old landmarks are gone?
Will I forget where I live, attempting to
return to a childhood address?
Children must
be cared for by responsible adults
because they cannot get their information
in proper order.
If I become like a child again, others will
have to take care of me.
I may not be able to find my own way in this
world.
Or I may have only a few moments of mental
clarity each day.
If I start to get the sequence of events mixed
up in my mind,
if I cannot remember who I am or what purposes
I was pursuing,
then my life as a full person may be drawing
to a close.
Certainly nothing more can be expected of
me
in the form of original, creative thinking.
If I can no longer
remember the person I was,
if I am no longer interested in pursuing the
purposes of James Park,
I will have ceased to be that person.
This could happen
suddenly, as the result of a stroke,
or I could gradually lose my memory and my
purposes.
Perhaps someday I will look at pictures of
myself at an early age
and not remember what the person in those
pictures remembered.
I may have access to information about the
person I used to be.
I might even be able to read the books I wrote
during my best years.
But if I have no personal memory of those
thoughts,
it will be as if someone else had written
my books.
(I have already
experienced this odd sensation
of distance from my own works,
since I cannot remember what I wrote years
ago.
I am even having this experience right now
as I re-write the draft of this essay,
which is dated just 2-1/2 years ago.
I do not remember writing these ideas.
So it is lucky I wrote them down when I had
them.
I would not be able to recreate them as well
today.
And when I read passages of books that I wrote
many years ago,
I often enjoy coming across them as a reader
does
---discovering them for the first time.)
If I lose my
personal memory of myself
as the person I was during most of my life,
I might be said to have become a new person.
In a way this is happening all the time,
as I revisit past phases of my life
and see them in a different light now than
I did then.
Even physically,
we are changing all the time.
The old cells are dying off and being replaced.
But there is usually enough continuity
for us to be sure that we are the same persons
who lived in these bodies so-and-so many years
ago.
But if my memory
and the rest of my mind is so changed
that I do not even seem to be the same person
to myself,
then I have probably become a new person in
the old body
---if I still have enough of the capacities
that make anyone a person.
And if the new person who lives in my old
body wants to live,
then perhaps that wish ought to be honored
and respected.
That will have to be decided by the people
around me at the time,
whom I have chosen to make such decisions
for me
when my own mental capacities might be in
doubt.
And perhaps I will have deteriorated in other
ways as well,
so that I can hardly be expected to pursue
any purposes at all.
If my most important memories are gone,
that might signal the disappearance of me
as a person.
I will remain
a full person while I remember and recognize myself.
Also, I must remember other persons who have
been important in my life.
One of the saddest notations found in nurses'
notes
is that the patient had a visitor but did
not recognize who it was.
If and when I
fail to recognize myself and others close to me,
that will be strong evidence that I have become
a former person.
If my own identity is slipping away with my
failing memory,
it will be hard to remember who I was.
And it may be even harder to remember the
other people in my life.
If I can no longer
interact with the people
who used to be important to me,
then I may still be worthy of respect as a
former person,
but it would be foolish and perhaps impossible
for them to treat me as the same person I
used to be,
because I will lack my old responses.
Those who respected me as the person I was
during my best years
may come to visit my body in a long-term
care facility,
but they will no longer be able to visit me
as a person.
It may be impossible for us to discuss subjects,
such as the contents of this essay,
even tho such issues would be very relevant
to discuss at the time.
If and when I
begin to lose my memory, I hope those who know me
will still respect me for the person I was
during my best years.
And I hope to be remembered and respected
after my death.
I will be dead for a much longer period
than I was alive.
And I hope some of the thoughts I have had
as a living person
will be helpful in the lives of other living
persons.
But I do
not want my body kept alive without my person inside.
My body will have already fulfilled its primary
purpose:
It has been a very good home for my person.
But if my period of personhood comes to an
end
some time before my body would normally be
laid to rest,
instead of attempting to preserve my body
as long as possible,
it would be much better to use the same money
to further the purposes I found most meaningful
as a person.
For example, it would be a greater honor to
me as a person
to spend the money making my books more widely
available
to people who can benefit from reading them.
If I were in
a position to enforce my opinion
(the values I now hold as a fully-functioning
person),
then my decision would be to let my body go
after my life as a person has been completed.
(Perhaps my life as a person will never be
completed;
it might be just over.)
Anyone who keeps my body 'alive' after my
memory has departed
does nothing for the person James Park.
Perhaps they will attempt such efforts
because of their memories of the person
I was.
But such efforts are contrary to my values.
If you who
survive me want to remember me as a person,
you should apply yourselves to reading
my books
and sharing my ideas with others who can
benefit from them.
My person will be much better encapsulated
in my books
after I have lost my memory than in my
body.
The memory now contained in my brain resides
in living cells,
which are inherently impermanent and subject
to decay.
But even when my brain no longer can recognize
my own words,
the various persons I have been during the
several phases of my life
will be better preserved in my written words
than anywhere else.
I, for one, would
not hesitate to declare myself a former person
if the body I now own and operate is ever
(before my biological death)
inhabited by some form of human life
that does not recognize the purposes for which
James Park lived.
If my skull contains no memory of James Park
as a person,
then as a person my life is over.
And I request that those around me take appropriate
measures
to insure the wise re-use of my body (or any
parts thereof),
rather than keeping my body 'alive' as long
as possible
as a kind of 'living memorial' to the person
James Park.
In a very important sense, if I have no memory,
James Park will have ceased to be.
If I ever lose
much of my memory,
others must take over my decisions for me.
And I hope they will respect the person I
was.
It may be difficult to relate with me
after I have forgotten who I am and who the
people around me are.
If and when that happens, I should be regarded
as a former person
and treated with the respect and dignity due
a former person.
If I no longer understand what people say,
if I have no thoughts to offer,
or if I cannot remember what was said to me
just a minute ago,
then such loss of memory would qualify me
as a former person.
My own past life might become a mystery to
me,
unless I retained the ability to read my own
books and journals.
And I might be reading them as if they were
written by a stranger.
If my short-term memory is still working,
I might be able to re-discover some interesting
things about my life
from reading and from listening to other people's
memories of me.
But if my earlier life is known to me only
thru reading and listening,
if I cannot recall any of it, then I have
become another person
than the one who lived those years---and remembered
them for a while.
It would be as if James Park had died already
and I was a new person learning about him
second hand.
In order to put
this philosophy of life and death into action,
I have established my Medical Care Decisions
Committee (MCDC),
whose members have known me for many years.
These people will decide when I have ceased
to be a person.
They will remember what I used to remember,
what sort of a person I used to be.
Thus, they will be in a better position to
make decisions for me
than any medical people taking care of me
at the end of my life.
Those doctors and nurses might not have met
me
until after I had deteriorated into being
a former person.
Only those who have known me for a long time
will truly be able to gauge the degree of
my loss of personhood.
My Medical Care
Decisions Committee will, of course,
take advantage of all the information modern
medicine can provide,
but ultimately my medical decisions will rest
with them.
And because they will all have read this essay
years in advance,
they will be ready to apply my criteria of
personhood to me.
So even tho they may grieve the loss of the
good times we shared,
they will at least be intellectually ready
to say
that James Park has crossed the line into
former personhood.
They will not attempt to preserve their memories
of me
by preserving my body after my life as a person
is over.
QUESTIONS FOR PROXIES ABOUT MEMORY
The people who
have known
the person (or former person) in question
for the longest time
will be able to notice how much memory has
been lost.
Discussing the following common-sense questions
can help them explore the degree of memory
loss.
1. Does _____ remember himself/herself
and other people?
2. Does _____ recognize and remember
other people
who have
been important in his/her life?
3. Does _____ recognize himself/herself
in a mirror?
4. Does _____ recognize himself/herself
from recent pictures?
5. Can _____ recognize himself/herself
from pictures
from various
periods of his/her past?
6. Do only the oldest pictures, perhaps
from childhood, evoke memories?
7. Can _____ identify other people from
old photographs?
8. Does _____ sometimes confuse periods
of his/her history?
9. Does _____'s mind sometimes slip
from the present
into some
past period of his/her history without notice?
10. Does _____sometimes confuse relatives
from different generations,
such as confusing
a mother with her daughter?
11. Does _____wish to return to a home that
no longer exists?
12. Has _____ reverted to using the native
language of childhood
---if this is different
from a language learned as an adult?
13. Has _____ forgotten some parts of his/her
history?
If others remember
what _____ said and did
better than _____
does, then clearly his/her memory is failing.
14. Does _____ seem to be a different person
because
the past has disappeared from memory?
15. Does _____ remember his/her past life
reliably?
16. Is _____'s memory of recent events less
reliable than old memories?
17. Does _____ sometimes lose track of a conversation
because of lack of
short-term memory?
18. Does _____ sometimes have difficulty telling
the difference
between memories of
real events and stories and dreams?
19. Does _____'s memory seem to fade and
depending on various
other factors of health and circumstances?
20. If you wanted to know something for certain
about the past,
would you trust _____'s
memory?
IV. LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
When is a person?
Personhood is marked by
flexible language and interpersonal communication.
As we develop
the capacity to understand and use language
in the first 18 months of our lives, we are
beginning to become persons.
And if there is a time before the end of our
lives
when we lose this wonderful capacity
to understand and communicate with other persons,
then we are losing one of the most important
marks of personhood
---a capacity that sets us sharply apart from
animals and computers.
A human being
who could not recognize and use symbols
might look like a normal human being in all
outward respects,
but it would not be a person.
We know of a few very rare instances of children
raised by animals.
If they reached the age of 5 or 6 without
human language,
without every hearing or speaking a human
word,
without ever using a symbol system,
then those human beings were not persons.
And after the
critical period for language imprinting has passed,
it seems next to impossible for a human being
to acquire a language.
This fact also has serious implications for
children
raised in language-poor households,
where language is confused or somehow missing.
Without language,
a human being remains like an animal.
Animals can certainly interrelate with others
in the household,
but they cannot really understand what the
others are doing.
Human noises do not signify for the animals
of the household
what they mean for the persons who understand
that language.
Children raised
without the benefit of language
may look like normal children, but they are
not.
Persons can only interact with them as they
do with household pets.
Some forms of mental retardation and mental
disabilities
also result in children lacking language ability.
They can learn to respond to sounds and
signals,
as a dog or cat might, but without language,
there is no way to communicate with
them.
Luckily even
children born deaf can learn sign language,
so that their minds can be as fully symbolic
as children who can hear and speak.
Most human beings naturally become persons
because they are so easily imprinted with
their native language
in the first few months of life.
A. Language Development in Children.
As soon as we
were born into this world,
we were exposed to language---people talking
every day, all day long.
They talked to one another. And they
even talked to us,
altho we could not understand a word they
said at first.
When we were
born, all languages were foreign to us.
But we quickly observed that people made noises
to communicate.
And we attempted to imitate human sounds before
we knew their meanings.
However, in contrast to a parrot, which can
also make language-sounds,
we began to understand what these sounds
meant
in the lives of the people around us.
With language
all around us, we soon began to pick up
the connections between human sounds and the
objects they signified.
We noticed that certain vocalizations went
with certain experiences.
And because our minds were prepared by evolution
to be very receptive to language in these
early months,
we quickly and easily acquired the language
we heard.
No formal instruction was needed.
The language around us was just imprinted
on our brains.
We picked up thousands of abstract symbols
(words)
and the often complex grammatical rules for
putting them together.
Thru trial and error, we gained the ability
to speak
and to make ourselves understood by others.
Also we soon
discovered
that language can refer to past and future
events.
The persons around us constantly talked about
yesterday and tomorrow.
So language was not mere pointing to what
everyone could see.
The persons around
us used language to communicate with others
concerning the things that were happening
inside
them,
their private thoughts and feelings, many
subtle issues and concerns
that could never be shown by pointing.
Animals never figure out this function of
language.
So most of what they hear is meaningless sounds.
Try to teach even the most intelligent animal
to read this page.
After years of
merely listening and talking,
we discovered that words can be transformed
into symbols on paper:
We were introduced to reading and writing.
After that, there was no limit to what we
could learn.
Language opened up worlds of information about
things
that we could never experience directly by
ourselves in one life-time.
We may have decided to learn new languages
---the ways of speaking and understanding
that developed
on different parts of the globe among our
species, homo sapiens.
With the help of these symbol systems,
we could acquire an almost limitless amount
of information.
Our language
capacity can continue to develop thru-out our lives.
Every day we can learn new words.
And perhaps we lose a few words that we used
to know
because we never have occasion to use them.
If we study specialized knowledge, we will
learn technical words
that apply only to that form of behavior or
concern.
Words can be used to explain the meanings
of new terms.
So our knowledge becomes an interconnected
web
of hundreds of thousands of words, all defined
by other words.
Language is the
most distinctive mark of a human person.
Those who miss the critical period for language
imprinting
can never quite catch up with the rest of
the human race.
They never become full persons in the ways
that all people
who can read and understand this essay are
persons.
In extreme cases we might say
that they remain members of the animal kingdom
even if they are kept among us as members
of the family.
They must be guided thru all of the activities
of their lives
the way we guide the behavior of animals.
Humans without language can be trained to
respond to signals,
but they will never understand why
they are being so directed.
When human animals
first developed the capacity to speak,
they burst out of the animal kingdom.
About 100,000 years ago, our ancestors became
persons.
Since then, all human cultures have created
abstract symbols,
which the persons of those cultures use every
day
in the complex process of interacting with
other persons.
Thus, language is essentially an interpersonal
phenomenon.
If there were only one human being on the
earth,
it would probably not have developed language,
and hence it would not have become a person.
So the concept
of "language" must be stretched to include
other forms of human interaction.
We relate with other persons thru the medium
of language.
And if we do not share a common language,
we still try to connect with different symbol
systems
by pointing to things for which we know we
all have words.
But pointing and making noises does not work
with animals,
because they lack abstract symbols for the
elements of their world.
We have probably taken our language ability
for granted
because it developed so early in our lives.
We have no recollection of acquiring our native
language.
We just grew up knowing our mother tongue.
And most of us continue to use and understand
language until we die.
But some people lose their capacity for language
before death.
So if language and communication are essential
to being a person,
what do we make of human beings who have no
language?
Some human infants,
however, do not develop language.
They are treated in every way as if they will
become persons.
We speak to them and about them
assuming they will eventually understand what
we say.
Most infants so treated do in fact develop
language,
without any further attention to the matter.
But some defective infants never develop any
ability
to understand and use a human language.
No matter how completely we treat them as
persons,
they never become persons.
They look and feel like all other human infants,
but without the communication capacity given
thru language,
they never become full persons. They
remain pre-persons.
Talking to them does no more good than talking
to our pets.
Both creatures remain non-persons if they
cannot understand language.
B. Animals Lack Full and True Languages.
Even tho many
pet-owners speak to their pets
as if they could understand, treating them
as if they were persons
or could become persons with enough attention,
at best such pets gain some awareness of human
sounds,
when they relate to a particular situation.
"No" is a common sound that pets can understand.
Some can understand the sounds we make
when we say "walk", "sit", "come", etc.
But we never expect our pets to talk back
to us.