Person and consciousness.
My interlocuter is Locke with his reduction of person to personal consciousness. This reduction is a main reason preventing people from acknowledging the personhood of the earliest human embryo, which lacks all personal consciousness. I show that Catholic Christians who live the sacramental life of the Church have reason to think that they are, as persons, vastly more than what they experience themselves to be, for they believe that the sacraments work effects in them as persons that can only be believed but that cannot be experienced within themselves in this life. I also show that Christians and non-Christians alike have an experience of moral good and evil in themselves that implies that they are, as moral persons, far more than they find in their conscious self-presence. It is, therefore, natural to think that if my being a person so far exceeds my consciousness, I may well have once existed as person even before the awakening of consciousness.
Crosby
J F
JF
Department of Philosophy, Franciscan Univesity of Steubenville, Steubenville, OH 43952, USA.
D033421:Beginning of Human Life; D002410:Catholicism; D003243:Consciousness; D004622:Embryo, Mammalian; D005333:Fetus; D006801:Humans; D028723:Personhood; D010684:Philosophy; D028725:Theology
Genetics and Reproduction; Religious Approach