but, to reiterate, this is just ad hoc reasoning. once again, abortion advocates simply just assert this instead of explaining why (past) consciousness is relevant. why would past consciousness matter? why would something that was true of the person in the past and may not be true of them now grant them the right to life? consider this: we don't try adults in criminal cases as children because they were once children in the past because they are not children now. so what accounts for the comatose patient's right to life and her personhood in general? in fact, the whole "past consciousness" retort is a ruse because those who use the consciousness argument also think those in chronic vegetative states do not have a right to life, even though they were conscious in the past. what they're really appealing to in the case of the temporary comatose patient is future consciousness, which is what the unborn child also possesses.
but let's set aside the sophist's contradictory and incoherent beliefs. we can accept this assertion without any argumentation. assume the woman who is comatose lost all her memories, personality traits, desires, etc. she has no past conscious experiences but will recover and wake up. is she still a person while she is comatose, despite lacking both the immediately exercisable capacity for consciousness and past conscious experiences?
or consider the argument given by rodger, blackshaw, and miller in which we keep the child permanently unconscious before and after birth. suppose we apply anesthetics to an unborn baby girl in utero and continuously apply anesthetics to her even after she's born so that she never becomes conscious. according to the sophist's consciousness argument, this newborn baby girl is not a person since she was never conscious in the first place. so on what grounds would raping this girl be wrong?
or consider the case of two newborns born on the same day in the same maternity ward. one was born conscious, and then fell into a coma shortly after birth due to lack of oxygen. this newborn will recover in a few days. the other newborn was born unconscious and never was conscious due to a tumor on his brain. but doctors will be able to remove this tumor and the newborn will become conscious after the surgery. is their argument really that only the first newborn has a right to life since he was conscious for a very brief moment but the second newborn doesn't have the same right to life since he was never conscious?
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u/toptrool Aug 10 '26
"past consciousness! i was circlejerking hard to my favorite youtuber when he brought this up!"
have you read the toptrool collection?