Persisting Substance and Human Dignity: When is a Human a Person?

Peter Singer believes that only humans have value when they become self-conscious. This assertion implies that infants, as beings unable to be self-conscious, are acceptable for scientific experimentation. All humans, however, have intrinsic value in every stage of development. Embryos, fetuses, infants, and adults belong to one kind. This kind is rational. Since it is human nature to be rational, humans have greater value than other organisms. When a new person is formed at conception, a new primary substance is made and this substance persists throughout the entire life of the new human. Humans are not made of temporal parts; a human is the same person, yesterday, today and throughout his entire life. In my argument, I will challenge Peter Singers’ belief that humans only have value when they obtain self-consciousness by contending that humans have intrinsic value because they have the same persisting substance from conception until death