Your body is your property so long as there is a you to own it. That stops at your death, barring any spiritual argument.
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Rights for the dead?
- Thread starter Jolly_Penguin
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Your body is your property so long as there is a you to own it. That stops at your death, barring any spiritual argument.
... and? A corpse is a valuable resource as prideandfall noted. In some ways it is more valuable than money.
BH
Veteran Member
I would like to be buried and not just thrown into a ditch. The idea of someone coming up and humping my dead rump repulses me, but if it is a very powerful politician that needs to be brought down and he has a liking for my booty and someone else can catch him on camera and ruin him later that night on the news then let him hump my rump. I'll take one for the greater good.
TSwizzle
I am unburdened by what has been.
Should zombies have the same rights as a corpse ?
laughing dog
Contributor
Since one can will one's dead body to science, it would seem your argument has a reality flaw.
Except that if you read the OP you would know I oppose that choice. All human corpses should go to science, or organ donation depending on need.
I realize our current laws don't agree, and the OP is asking for any secular argument for the current state of the law.
What basis do you seen for giving any rights to corpses? Or to giving any say to the memory of a person?
How can an object like a corpse have rights? It is like saying anti-littering ordinances are protesting the rights of parks.
Axulus
Veteran Member
It is their property. If you don't allow them to distribute it how they see fit when dead, they'll attempt to do it will alive. It is an unreasonable burden. Furthermore, the betterment of one's children is a big motivating factor for a large number of people. Should we also ban spending money on one's own children while one is still alive? The implication of your proposal would suggest that yes, we should.
Ideally yes. Ideally you would not be raising your own biological offspring. Children would be raised by expert caregivers, and all given opportunity based on merit rather than birth right. But I do understand society isn't ready for that yet.
ruby sparks
Contributor
Indeed. If the OP title was changed to 'Rights for Furniture?' would the issue be about giving or not giving rights to the objects themselves, or more about giving living people rights, the 'owner' while he or she is alive and the 'recipients' afterwards.
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ruby sparks
Contributor
Should all furniture owned by someone who dies be given to the homeless?
Possibly, but there is a half-decent secular argument against it.
laughing dog
Contributor
As people have pointed out, because your body is considered your property. That is a SECULAR argument.
Your disagreement with it does not make it any less secular.
See above.
I have no idea what you mean by that.
If parks had been living people before they became parks, your analogy might have some force.
Yes, while I disagree with them, there are some coherent secular arguments for inheritance, and one was presented above. But that isn't precisely what the OP is about.
I am asking about rights for the corpse itself.
What if no living person claims the body? Would it then be wrong to chop it for parts and use it as a teaching cadaver? Anything wrong with using it for animal food, as a sex toy for necrophiliacs? Anything wrong with digging up graves of long forgotten people?
We have a whole branch of law that deals with what happens to your property when you die -- estate law.
As for the grand "why" we have estate law, I'd guess it's some utilitarian argument like "enough people want it that way".
We (as a society) consider the control of our property upon death a valuable thing, so we set up means to do it.
Yes indeed we do here too. I have done numerous wills and powers of attorney for people (for property and personal care of the still living but no longer capable of making decisions). While I agree with the basis for the latter, I don't agree on the former, and the laws we do have are written up in a quasi-religious way - still talking about the dead as if they are a sill a person. But again, not what this thread is really about, so lets get back on topic.
ronburgundy
Contributor
Humans are decidedly NOT "property" under the law. Laws that apply to property cannot be applied to your body while alive, so why once you are dead? For example, you can sell your property to another and once you do, you lose all claim to it and have no right to get it back. You cannot do that with your body. You can allow a person to do things to your body but they can never control or own it in any sense true of actual property. Anyone who pays you to own your body is a sucker because the second you say "no", they have no claim and any effort by them to exert their claim is a crime.
Your body is not your property, it is a part of "you" and you non-transferable, even to your kin. But the second you are dead "you" don't exist, so that body becomes a carcass where the only person with the right to ever control it no longer exists.
I don't think principles of property or rights over oneself requires granting people the right to determine the fate of the flesh that was once part of them. However, I can see some kind of social contract where we allow this. But I would say the default should be that bodies are both the responsibility and right of the state to deal with it as best benefits society, unless an explicit statement by the person prior to death requests someone else be granted legal authority over it.
For example, organ and cadaver donation should be the default, requiring people to opt out, and even then only if they name someone besides the state to cover all expenses of body disposal.
Yeah, when it comes to organs I see a reason for eminent domain.
However, how about my proposal on organs:
Instead of the current yes/no on your ID there's yes/unsuitable/no. Records are kept!
If you need an organ they look at these records and the transplant list is ranked by [years of yes+unsuitable/yes+unsuitable+no]. Minors get the average of their parents, your record is wiped clean on your 18th birthday. Those marked unsuitable (which requires a medical explanation but that's not accessible other than if a hospital checks) can still have bits taken for research use. What's on your ID is absolute, the family can't override it.
Result: Organs go first to those who were willing to provide organs to others.
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The dead have property rights. What do you think an estate is??
RVonse
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Scientifically, it would appear the brain is actually the dividing point between being considered property or not. Even while alive. But since (today's technology) you can not be separate from your body, the body in whole gets the same legal status. But after brain death, you cease to exist and the only thing left is the property of your body. This would be my best interpretation how I see society of today assigns and rationalizes according to organ donation, estates, and funerals.
And if the aforementioned is close to correct, I believe that has future implications for both women's rights and also AI. When (if?) it becomes possible to transplant a human brain and spinal column into an android, will the remains of your old organic body still considered you or property? A reasonable person would say that those old remains would no longer be you but would be considered your property. Human remains that are your property and no longer you but still under your control should you would want to sell the parts. But what would your new android machinery be considered? According to today's norms I would say the android machinery legally becomes you.
laughing dog
Contributor
The entire thrust of the OP misses the point. We do not grant rights to the dead - we grant rights to the LIVING. Dead people have no rights as dead people - they had rights when they were living and one of those rights is to have one's "contracts" fulfilled, even when one is dead.
For example, if I paid to have my body interred so that it would not be sexually molested, and I paid for that service, then it is fraud to allow my dead body to be sexually molested. Or if I donated resources to a group on the condition that the group provide shelter to the homeless, it would be fraud if they took those resources and did not provide shelter to the homeless. One of the obvious reasons for fulfilling the wishes or conditions of the now dead is that in doing so, it promotes charitable donations or commerce.
Societies around the world and through the ages somehow have tended to agree that the such contracts be respected and legally enforced. There is nothing necessarily sectarian about such views.
For example, if I paid to have my body interred so that it would not be sexually molested, and I paid for that service, then it is fraud to allow my dead body to be sexually molested. Or if I donated resources to a group on the condition that the group provide shelter to the homeless, it would be fraud if they took those resources and did not provide shelter to the homeless. One of the obvious reasons for fulfilling the wishes or conditions of the now dead is that in doing so, it promotes charitable donations or commerce.
Societies around the world and through the ages somehow have tended to agree that the such contracts be respected and legally enforced. There is nothing necessarily sectarian about such views.
That would get even more interesting if the company that makes the android claims ownership over it and leases it to you or claims IP over its design.
If somebody has a right to have contractual obligation fulfilled for them, then they do indeed have rights.
Not fraud. Breach of contract. And why should we honour contracts to people who don't exist anymore? That's an interesting question. There may be a good secular reason if, and only if, there are living people affected by it.
No, that is a stupid reason. Because the state taking all property of the dead and using it to better fund social programs to the benefit of all, including organ harvesting and cadaver supply to medical students is going to do more good than these theoretical purported charitable donations you speak of, that may or may not even happen.
A better reason, and one raised above. People do work hard to provide for their families, including after they are gone. That selfish impulse of putting your own kids is definitely something to contend with and a rational secular argument for inheritance. As is the argument made in the previous thread that people may gift their valuables to their children and then outlive their expectations and have children who don't support them back, and leave them destitute. But there are good counter arguments to that as well, and that is better discussed in another thread. That's more to do with inheritance and less to do with rights for the dead.
And societies around the world and through the ages have tended to believe in spiritual life after death, some even to the point of ancestor worship. The dead are revered, honoured, and obeyed due to religious or quasi-religious impulses. This thread asks about secular reasoning.