BigBallinStalin wrote:Shucks, <kicks a beard>
I guess human beings are actually a bunch of sperm undergoing acrosome reactions in order to penetrate an egg.
(or if we apply the argument of the beard, does this mean that no human ever existed? --I'm muddling through the wikipedia, so I'm not sure how to apply that fallacy).
I think you're mostly joking, but I don't see how the argument of the beard entirely covers the arguments involved in "human being" and fertilized egg. Our use language and certain words muddles the description of certain things. Aristotle goes on about matter, form, and their compound, which leads to a substance (which is that primary 'thing' of being). When we ask, "What is 'this'?" for Aristotle, we're asking about the substance (e.g. 'This' is a human being). So, matter = biological stuff, form = pattern (human form), compound = human being.
We're stuck with form as the main determinant of the difference among objects (acc. to Aristotle and me for now). If one wishes to claim that a fertilized egg is a human being, then they'd have to argue that
this is equal in form to
this.
Of course, these are in no way similar in form. However, if we compare babies to kids to adults, then arguably they are not the same exact form; however, c'mon, we got enough similarity in form for us to conclude: "ah-ha! all three are definitely human beings!"
How does the argument of the beard mesh with the above three paragraphs?
Well, basically it seemed to me that patches was commiting the fallacy of the beard. Namely that because you can't claim, in a continuous process that a "person" is created at a specific instance, then a "person" must always be there.
It's the same with the beard. Just because you cannot exactly pinpoint the instance in time when you went from beardless to beardfull doesn't mean that no such transition existed.
Once more I'll have to go meta on this whole argument at this point.
Why are we discussing this and getting tied up in terminology ("human life" vs. "human being" vs. "person").
If this is some masturbatory philosophy exercise about language itself, then I'll bow out. If however this is about the legal ramifications of the status of a foetus, then I think this is being approached in the wrong way. We seem to be attempting to find some objective truth that doesn't exist imo.
First of all, what we're really interested in isn't when something becomes "human" or a "person" or whatever, but when a foetus should start having a right to life that overrides its mother's right to do what she wants with her body. That is the only question that needs to be answered.
Unless you subscribe to the idea of a soul, then this point will necessarily be subjective and somewhat arbitrarily decided by the current social norms. As Neo likes to point out, there is no biological reason to indicate that a being should start having rights from a certain chemical reaction onwards. Indeed, a couple hundred years ago, when infant mortality was rampant in some areas, I think some people didn't really consider a baby a "person" till it had gotten past that dangerous period. (though I may be wrong about this, just a feeling I got from some readings).
The people who disagree with this subjectiveness, please explain to me why a certain chemical reaction should grant legal rights to a clump of cells. No, saying "DNA, duh" isn't enough. *
Accepting the subjectiveness, we now must move on to a cost/benefit analysis, looking at the impact that a certain "personhood" definition has on all factors involved (freedom of mother, freedom of foetus, tangential effects on society, etc). As with the argument of the beard, it seems clear to me that the mother's rights overule the rights of a single fertilized cell and that the rights of a viable baby overule the mother's rights(cause she can just remove it and give it up for adoption at that point).
Where exactly the line should be drawn in between those 2 points, I'm not sure and I'd rather leave to biologists. Adding a margin of error, I'd say I'd be happy with declaring a foetus a person anywhere between ~6 and ~20 weeks (very rough approximation obviously).
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* The one decent argument I've heard about objectively deciding personhood is the probabilities one. However it is lacking. I've posted the following thought experiment several times, but haven't received any good responses from the proponents of the probability argument.
We build a device that artificially inseminated an egg, then places the cell in an incubator and eventually leads to a baby being born(made ?). Yes, Brave New World style. This device is very performant and the egg and sperm genetically engineered, it's probability of succesfully creating a healthy human baby is > 90%.
Now, we put the machine on a 10 minute timer. After the 10 minutes are up the machine starts the process that leads to a human with 90% probability, but during the timer all we have are separate egg cells and sperm. Am I commiting murder if I cancel the process during these 10 minutes? After all, If I don't a human will result with 90% probability.
What if a hacker breaks in and programs the machine to use up all our eggs and sperm continuously to make as many humans as possible (let's say we have a capacity of 100, so that'd be 1300 humans in 10 years). Am I a prolific mass murderer if I halt this command?
It's useful to see how people go wrong in their thinking, but I'll agree that it is not as useful as arguing about 'when should the X get person-rights?'
