Článek se věnuje kritice ontologického personalismu, podle kterého je každý lidský jedinec osobou na základě té skutečnosti, že patří do biologického druhu Homo sapiens. Je ukázáno, že druhové členství Homo sapiens není nutnou ani postačující podmínkou k získání morálního statusu osoby, protože jedinec by měl být osobou díky tomu, že vlastní jisté osobu-činící charakteristiky, a nikoli proto, že patří do jisté genealogické linie. Dále je představeno genetické kritérium osoby, podle kterého je lidským jedincům vrozená základní kapacita, kterou mají od počátku jejich existence. Tato kapacita zapříčiňuje u těchto jedinců vývoj osobu-činících charakteristik. Lidský jedinec je díky této kapacitě osobou už od okamžiku početí, a nikoli až když se mu dostatečně vyvinou osobu-činící charakteristiky. Ukázal jsem mimo jiné, že genetické kritérium osoby je morálně nezdůvodnitelné, protože by nemělo být morálně relevantní vlastnění určité kapacity (DNA), ale reálná dispozice projevit tuto kapacitu. and The article deals with criticism of ontological personalism. According to ontological personalism every human being is a person because he belongs to the biological species Homo sapiens. It is shown that the membership of Homo sapiens is not a necessary or sufficient condition for obtaining the moral status of a person. An individual should be a person because they possess certain personal characteristics and not because they belong to a certain genealogical line. Further, the article deals with the genetic criterion of a person. Human individuals have innate basic capacity that they have from the beginning of their existence. The human individual is therefore a person from the moment of conception. I have shown, among others, that the genetic criterion of a person is morally unjustified. There is no morally re levant h aving certain capacities (DNA), but the real disposition to show this capacity.
The concept of personal identity has recently come to play an increasingly important role in bioethical discussion concerning the beginning and end of human life. This study does not aim to represent the whole range of applications of theories of personal identity to bioethics. It focuses only on the beginning of human life, namely on the question of the moral acceptability of abortion. The author begins by describing an argument rejecting the acceptability of abortions which has been advanced by P. Lee, and it is shown that the validity of this argument depends on a certain conception of personal identity. Then the author briefly defines the psychological approach to personal identity, and he points to its weaknesses. There follows a discussion of the theory of animalism which claims that our persistence in time does not comprise any psychological factors. The conclusion of the article deals with various theories of moral status and indicates the inadequacy of functional criteria in accounting for the moral point of view. The article finishes by stating that the moral status of human beings should be founded on the concept of human dignity. If the considerations in the study have been set out correctly then they justify the following conclusion: abortions are morally unacceptable., David Černý., and Obsahuje poznámky a bibliografii
Personites are shorter-lived, person-like things that extend across part of a person’s life. Their existence follows from the standard perdurance view of persons. Johnston argues that it has bizarre moral consequences. For example, it renders morally problematic spending time learning a difficult language in anticipation of going abroad. The crucial thought is that if persons have moral status so do personites. Johnston argues for this claim. Kaiserman responds, on behalf of stage theory, that this only works on a perdurantist account. This is a conservative response to the problem. It seeks to show that retaining the ontology of perdurantism one can resolve the difficulty by a semantic change. I show that the personite problem can be reworked as an argument against stage theorists. The stage theorist can respond by rejecting an assumption of the reasoning. But if it is acceptable for him to do so the perdurantist can reject this assumption too, which is enough by itself to block Johnston’s argument. Thus, for all it helps with the personite problem, stage theorists might as well be perdurantists.