Black and White Thinking: The burden of a binary brain in a complex world

by Professor Kevin Dutton

Let’s look at it another way. Does there exist, embedded deep within the template of our life span, some specially appointed hour, some solemnly significant day when a person who is categorized as ‘middle-aged’ suddenly gets categorized as ‘old’? Or when someone who is categorized as ‘young’ suddenly becomes ‘middle-aged’? Clearly not. Then why can’t we accept that the opposite might also hold true: that at no specific point along the spectral in-utero timeline does a collection of cells, a rash of genetic stardust, suddenly erupt into a fully fledged human being? The reason is because it matters. The life of the unborn is sometimes under threat. We are compelled to instantiate a hard, unconditional border between the categories person and non-person so that we can then introduce a further criminological airlock