But insisting that abortions are the killing of a person — Clearbury

I insist that an adult pregnant woman, for example, is a person. I think we all agree there.

But what do all the examples of a person have in common? What is human being? Are they only adults?

Without insisting anything more, I hypothesize that a person, a human being, is a distinct, living organism having a human set of DNA.

Analyzing further what a person is, what human being” means, using my reason and observation, I see that the adult woman was once nothing more than a fetus, and before that, a zygote, and before that she was not anything at all. It was not until after her conception that there was a distinct living organism having a human set of DNA.

It’s not much, what a human being is, to me. Just the same type of thing as any other mammal. We are the human kind of living organism. All individual living organisms started their individual lives sometime after an individual conception, or at conception.

To me conception is all you need to have a whole life. How long that life endures, and whatever it becomes is all born at conception.

The woman certainly didn’t exist before her conception. And as far as I’ve ever heard or been able to think of for myself, any set of functions or other attributes I add to my simple definition, like a heartbeat, or sensation and brain activity, or consciousness, or self-awareness, or reasoning/willing abilities, or spirits or souls, these are either arbitrary (meaning non-essential), usually they are themselves undefined or vague and untestable, and/or they end up excluding newborns.

So I’m not “insisting” that fetuses are persons, I’m trying to argue it based on what I observe to be a new human life.

it really is the case that virtually everyone's reason represents the killing of one of those to be wrong, and that really is evidence that they are persons. — Clearbury

I know you are trying to be clear and I appreciate that. And maybe you are being clear and I just haven’t caught it yet. And I don’t mean to misrepresent you, I’m just not getting it.

“Virtually everyone’s reason represents X…”
That, to me, translates to “Virtually everyone thinks X.”
The term “reason represents” though is unclear to me, which is why I have translate it “thinks”.

Are you saying that, because all we know is that a fetus before birth may or may not be a person, we should conduct our moral analysis based on not knowing what a fetus is? We should jump to the moral/ethical/policy discussion with the ambiguous nature of the fetus as the best we can get?

relationship entails communication, so it is a language. — Pop

That is interesting. As a metaphysical construct.

Relationship is language.
Things speaking, by simply being, related.

Honestly, I’m not sure I follow you. It would help me if you didn’t use the poison berry/guide book analogy, and just state the case using words like pregnant woman, fetus, person, abortion, rules, ethics, etc.

virtually everyone's reason represents the killing of [a newborn baby] to be wrong, and that really is evidence that they are persons. — Clearbury

Because most other people don’t kill newborns, you see that as evidence that they are persons.

I’d just state, because newborns ARE persons, and adult persons think killing persons is wrong, most people don’t kill newborns.

But there is no evidence of what the definition of a person, adult or newborn, actually is here, just an observation about what they don’t kill.

Many people kill fetuses and many don’t. If you were a person considering whether abortion killed a persons or not, whether some of these people who kill or don’t kill got the rule about killing persons right or wrong, the evidence, the guidebook, most people’s reason, the consensus, is still lacking.

Tons of differences.

What kind of embryo is it? I can’t tell by looking at it. Do you know?

you can't tell a zygote from Mrs Smith, there is little more to say. — Banno

:lol:
The point is you can’t tell.

Let’s try this. Do zygotes and Mrs Smith have anything at all in common?

See, I know the answer (there a few for sure). I’m just wondering if you could “tell” anything in common since you won’t tell the difference, and think I can’t.

I don’t think you can say what Mrs Smith is. So you just want to moralize about value. Too many (undefined) desires, needs and wants, but not enough physics and biology and simple logic. You just want to talk about her value, comparing her to cysts over a nice ethical lunch. :lol:

The question is whether abortions are right or wrong. — Clearbury

But you are assuming you know what an abortion is. You have to assume what an abortion is before you can hold it up for moral judgment.

The question is simply, what is an abortion?

Or more simply, when does a human being first come into being?

If you know that, you know that very thing you need to know about an abortion, and we can start to make moral judgments about it.

What is an abortion?
Typically, removal of unwanted tissue from a pregnant woman’s uterus.

What is the tissue? Is there anything we need to know about that?

If we end up concluding (after reasoning from evidence and making No assumptions) that this tissue is an individual human being, it would change the definition of “abortion”, don’t you think?

We may have to make policy on abortion, have laws and protections enforced, and even claim who is good and who is bad, but in the meantime, when we are discussing the many questions surrounding this practice, we can’t avoid the question “what is a human being” and satisfy any moral judgments we want to make about it. At least I don’t see how.

reason of most — Clearbury

The abortion debate is illogical statements, wrong facts, and mundane political agenda - the reason of most fails.

I’ll settle for the reason of one, anyone.

There are consistent positions that both include the zygote (new fetus) as a person and exclude the new fetus as a person. We should never assume anything.

I think the most consistent position is the zygote me was just me before I woke up this morning. It was me yesterday, a long time ago. I’m not very much, but the zygote me was enough for me to be measured and found to exist.

From there it would seem “abortion is wrong”. But I haven’t gotten there yet. I don’t think we can never kill a person, so just because abortion means killing a person to me, it doesn’t mean abortion is wrong.

But I’m still interested in just the facts.

You said a person has a mind. Yes, I agree. But if this is an essential element that must exist at the moment a new human being first comes to exist (the moment a mind comes to exist), are you willing to explain whether a new born baby is a person too?

I’m not saying this is your definition of a person. You said mind equals person or human being above somewhere. I’m just going with that to start a discussion about what we mean by human being as a part of a conversation about pregnant human beings (and abortion).

it may be time to reassess your values — Banno

Not so fast. So quick to judge my values.

So far you said a human being has “needs and desires” and “can do ethics and lunch”. That’s a human being as you choose to see it.

Is that it? Any more qualities of Mrs Smith that distinguish her from the zygote?

Newborn humans can’t value anything.
Newborns can’t conceptualize anything that would allow for them to participate in ethical behavior.
Newborn humans are, cognitively, less than many other species of adult mammals.

If you don’t give me more qualities of Mrs Smith, then, what is your highly moral and ethically superior reason for treating newborn human as you would Mrs Smith? Or don’t you value newborns either?

Then how is a new born baby any different than a zygote, because new born babies don’t do ethics or lunch either?

True. And if you keep comparing all these values, you keep sounding like you are avoiding the conversation. I'm asking you to tell me what you value about Mrs. Smith. Do all I get is "desires and needs." Everything I come up with applies to the cyst, or it doesn't apply to the tiny new baby.

Again.

if the faculties of reason of most warn against having abortions, then regardless of what assumptions we might make about fetuses, our guide-book on reality - our reason - is implying that fetuses are persons.

On the other hand, if the faculties of reason of most do not warn against abortions, then our reason is implying that they are not the destruction of persons. — Clearbury

I'm just not sure how this helps a pregnant person who asks "I don't know what to do because I don't want to be pregnant or have a baby, but I also don't want to kill a person, so what would you do if you were me?" I guess I'm saying, please write the guidebook according to Clearbury.

What a mess. — Banno

Right. You can't stop contradicting yourself. Contradictions like:

What counts as a human being and what does not is an issue not of looking around and discovering something that is the case. — Banno

And "look around, see what I've discovered that is the case:

What is clear is that Mrs Smith is a human being. — Banno

Total mess.

It would be unreasonable - not reasonable - to assume the blue ones are poisonous. For if they were poisonous, then on the assumption this is something the guide book author knows and would wish to warn us about, there'd be a warning against eating them....yet there isn't. — Clearbury

All of that is a reasonable way to make an assumption. But what if you don't want to make an assumption? The guidebook is unhelpful if you do not want to make an assumption.

All berries and poisons aside, we are talking about the life and death of human beings, and/or the aborting (killing) of human beings, or not. It matters to both the pregnancy woman and the baby where the poison/person actually is.

I do not think it is reasonable to infer that, because a human fetus (a thing that all of us came from directly according to our DNA) is not like me, an adult who uses his mind to think about things, I was not a human being when I was only a fetus. I think it is more reasonable to infer that a human being, like any living thing, changes through many stages and all of those stages make up one life, of one living individual thing, like a human being.

What counts as a human being and what does not is an issue not of looking around and discovering something that is the case. but of making a choice. The line can be put anywhere we choose. — Banno

So the set of all humans (whatever the definition) is defined by a choice. All definitions are by a choice I take it. You are talking about how we define things, not about any definitions, any particular choices. And your definition of what a definition is, namely, "putting lines anywhere we choose" is wholely unhelpful to any argument about anything. So I can be correct to choose to define a person as a cyst or a grapefruit. Weak.

What is clear is that Mrs Smith is a human being. — Banno

What is clear??!!! I thought our choices are necessary to clarify any definition. What takes your choice away from you and demands that you say "Mrs Smith is a human being"?

Instead of defining a human being you just point "Look over there at Mrs Smith - that's a human being."

It is clear that she has capabilities, needs, and desires — Banno

Finally. Some qualities of a human being. I think we should skip desires because how on earth can you know a new born baby has any desires?

What "needs" and "capabilities" does Mrs Smith have that a cyst does not have such that we can point to Mrs. Smith and say "human being" and point to a cyst and say "see, not a human being"?

Your insistence on conception as an absolute partition from which moral considerations apply — Banno

I have yet to talk morality. Your insistence that I am talking morality is deluded.

I can honestly stipulate that the law and policy should be that every pregnant woman gets to decide for herself whether to carry the baby to term or to abort the pregnancy. None of my business. Pregnancy is totally unique and there is no analogy to it. I would love to move away from the hidden agendas in what is really a basic philosophic discussion. I am willing to say, as policy, a woman can abort her unborn child even though it is a human being just like you and me.

So your insistence on avoiding a simple question, or answering it with "choices" and "needs" seems to me like you have no clue what this discussion is.

What is a human being?

I take, perhaps mistakenly, being a person and having a mind to be synonymous. — Clearbury

What evidence is there that a new born baby has a mind? When you say you have a "mind" do you mean certain the thing that seems to coincide with certain brain activity? Or do you mean self-conscious thinking, because I don't see that evidence until we get at least a few weeks or months past birth.

if the guide book warns against eating yellow berries, but issues no warning about blue berries, then I think it's reasonable to have as one's working assumption that blue berries are not poisonous. — Clearbury

That's not good logic. If yellow, than poisonous. Not yellow, so not poisonous? Couldn't it mean the author of the book never saw a blue berry before? And blue berries are more poisonous? Yellow berries are poison berries tells you nothing about blue berries at all.

If mind, then human being. No mind, so no human being. So when a person has an accident and they have no mind, while they live, the thing that lives is not a human being? Though they continue to breath and their heart beats and their cells conduct mitosis, etc., they cease to be a human being and we should call them some other animal? Or is it a human being with a very short life expectancy?

The orphanage, of course. — RogueAI

Problem solved. All questions answered. No more reason to debate abortion I guess.

Why are people risking their lives to save anything? Are orphans under fire more valuable than firemen?

You can distort the morality all over the place if you don’t define the terms. What is a fertilized egg? Is that a stage in a chicken’s life? Or do you mean something like an acorn that hasn’t hit the dirt yet? Or do you mean a living human organism, like a fireman or an orphan?

Hard to say what I’d do without definitions.

Because us deep thinkers are so squeamish about burning orphans, pregnant victims of rape and all the other emotionally charged aspects of this discussion, no one ever thinks through the problem simply and methodically and using actual empirical evidence and reasoned argument. Maybe a fertility clinic is another name for human trafficking superstore. I don’t really care to judge the good or bad of burning orphans versus burning zygotes. Just wondering if anyone can say why a burning orphan is a burning human being, whereas a burning zygote is not. How do you define an orphan that makes it something other than a human lump of flesh like any other fertilized egg at a fertility clinic?

Did the mother kill all the zygotes/embryos/fetuses that were miscarriage? Was the mother wrong for having miscarriages since, by your definition, it's the act of killing all those organisms? — night912

The question is whether a miscarriage is the end of the short life of a person, or not. Why jump to asking for blame and “wrongness” without addressing the moving pieces of the argument.

If a new person/human being is costs when we have a zygote, then clearly yes, a miscarriage is the death of a person/human being.

I see human beings as bodies - we have the magical power of “mind” or whatever makes us feel so special when we start philosophizing about things as adults, but we remain bodies, bodies that only began growing, living, as a unique organism at conception. Any other moment in the life of the human body asserted as the moment the human comes to be a living human individual, is arbitrary. Waiting and hoping for a better argument or definition of a human being.

And why would a woman be “wrong” for something out of her control like a miscarriage? No one is ever wrong for anything they cannot intend. (This is a tangient conversation about morality generally. If a fetus is not a person, we don’t need to talk about morality, and if a fetus is a person and no one wants to kill it, we don’t need to talk morals either.)

everyone you accuse of being morally wrong for reducing Mrs. Smith is in fact trying to elevate the value of the life you dismiss as a mere cyst, while not reducing anyone else’s. You’re the one defending the killing, after all. — NOS4A2

That is exactly right. The question is whether all of Banno’s wonderful concerns for other women apply to people in the earliest moments of their lives.

More specifically for me, the question is simply what is a human being regardless of whatever one might want to do with it at any stage in its life.

I’m just trying to clarify what are the pawns on this game board. Banno’s leaping to game strategy and using it to tell me something can’t be a pawn, but won’t define a pawn.

Interesting that the libertarians hereabouts are so keen on controlling the very bodily autonomy of others. Women, specifically. Black and poor, predominantly. — Banno

Who said anything about any of that? I could care less what you or anyone does. I don’t need a law for or against abortion or lump flesh surgery or not. I will recognize my own morality and choose accordingly like everyone else has to. Politicians are all idiots like the rest of us. Are the ones who say “a lump of flesh called a human blatocyst is not a whole human life” accurate? Are they just as full of shit as someone saying anyone is controlling anyone else by trying to have a conversation?

The guide book is analogous to our faculty of reason, the warning is analogous to our reason telling us not to do something, and the poisonousness - or likely poisonousness - of the berries is the fetus's person status. — Clearbury

I am following you here.

If our faculty of reason - or at least, the faculty of reason of many - warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer from this that the fetus has a mind, as this is the best explanation of why it is warning us against having them if, that is, this is what it does. — Clearbury

I would say “if our faculty of reason warns us against abortions, then it is reasonable to infer the human fetus is a person.” Likely poisonousness is likely personhood. Why did you jump to “fetus has a mind”? Isn’t that like jumping to “yellow berry has arsenic”. It’s poisonous but we can’t use use reason, without more facts, to infer something specific. Unless to you, human being equals minded being.

On the other hand, if it issues no such warning - or only issues it if one represents the fetus to b a person (which would be equivalent to looking up 'should I eat poisonous berries?' in the guide - a question that it will obviously answer with 'yes' and that tells one nothing about whether the yellow berries are poisonous or not) - then it is reasonable to infer that the fetus is not a person. — Clearbury

That I don’t follow. Can you clarify? I would use your analogy to equate “the berries are poison” with. “the fetus is a human being”. How did you get to “fetus is not a person”? Are you saying if you found a blue berry and didn’t see anything in the book about blueness, you could infer it must not be poisoneess?

Yes. In fact I am.

I guess I’m not making sense to you.

Hope you are okay too then.

Maybe you are annoyed I keep asking “what” when you want to go in to the motions of “how”.

You told me to fill in “whatever” on what a “person, human, baby, but not a cyst” thing is.

Seems like a hole in any argument based on that just waiting fo open up to me.

I mean “whatever” has as much a definition as any other term, it’s just really broad in practice, so you are pointing to “mere definitions” and “backbone” by pointing to “whatever” anyway. May as well define something more specific. See what “whatever” is really useful and whatever is not. Or maybe you don’t care.

Definitions are the backbone and morality valuations are in the movement of that backbone. (Judgment is in both positions but I digress.)

We all have to play with essences. It’s called having a conversation. A dialogue.

I’m asking the scientific question: if a pregnant woman was considering whether to carry to term or have an abortion, and she asked “Is a human fetus at any stage a full enough thing to be called a person, human being, thing like me, little baby?”

What is your answer? Not how to live morally with ambiguity. We can get to that later. What would you be able to say to her using your reason and experience (since you have been a person all of your life, or maybe not, or maybe you can’t say that either, or…)?

I think the more meta/physical/empirical questions here are way more interesting. Let people figure out what to do about it for themselves.

Neither of us should think we’ve said much if we are trading value judgments without sharing a context, like a basic definition.

Without definitions, we may only be monologuing, and about abortion no less. Painful.

You define stuff all the time here. Come on, play with it a bit. Humor me. What are the essential qualities of a living human being, that we must be able to measure in some way to demonstrate the coming to be of this human being?

REVISED:
And if you were really wondering if I was ok, thanks for asking. I am ok. To give you a more specific answer to whatever “ok” means, I am a bit longing for some actually stimulating conversation, but that’s still within my definition of “ok”. I am being more specific for you answering your question to try to convey something meaningful, so that this might be a conversation. Any definition of a human, person, not a cyst, Mrs Smith thing would be appreciated.

use whatever you like — Banno

Really? That is as specific as it gets? No other starting point than “whatever”?

That a cyst is not of the same value as Mrs Smith remains true. I — Banno

True. And Mrs Smith is not of the same value as a newborn baby. And a blind and deaf four year old is of different value, etc etc.

Of course.

mere definitions — Banno

I’ll take a “mere” definition.

You keep relying on Mrs. Smith to make your point. What is a “Mrs Smith”?

If you need to call on mere definitions to give your moral theory some backbone, then it's a shit poor theory. — Banno

If you don’t give any thought to the definitions, you don’t even have any “bone” in some other “shit poor theory.”

I get it.

But do you?

I haven’t really been talking about the moral question at all. Rather engage on something more concrete, more scientific, something we can abstract objects from and with logic discuss them here...

You have to moralize about something, or else there is nothing to say. “Mere definitions.”

“Mrs Smith is of greater value”. So what? What is a “Mrs Smith” then if you think you can move on to the morality surrounding the moments before and after birth for something like a “Mrs Smith” (“whatever” that is..)

Get my question?

Every definition of “human being” I come up with either starts with conception, or it is some point well after the day I was born. So in the context of abortion, there is no logical reason to grant special protection to newborn lumps of flesh.

We can play moralist politician and preacher about the subject, or we can just say what it is.

Fuck value! Kill ‘em all! (That’s a Metallica album - don’t kill anyone.)

Value WHAT!!?

What counts as a human being is a decision — Banno

Based on what physical or metaphysical evidence can we make a decision about “what counts as a human being?”

A foetus was killed. — Banno

So a human foetus is not a human being?

I’m waiting for the qualities of an organism that make it a human being.

note that the act of abortion itself, the act of killing this organism, is rarely mentioned in these discussions from an abortionist standpoint — NOS4A2

:100:

You take a new born baby and cut its head off and you are Hitler. You take a 6 month old human fetus and cut its head off and no one can say what just happened.

No one who supports abortion will give a definition of a human being that includes a new born baby, yet everybody seems to think new born babies are precious, cute baby human beings; put it back in the uterus and we need to look for minds and higher consciousness, or value before they will say what it is.

I actually don’t mind calling us only meat in this discussion. This conversation about moving physical bodies around and what the nature of those bodies are. We are defining objects and motions like “pregnant woman” and “fetus” and “abortion tools that terminate the life and/or remove the fetus”, etc. It’s all meat, from the moment of conception. That’s all we need to define a whole human life. That’s all we can objectively measure. They want to add “mind” to the meat or “consciousness of pain” or other abilities and functions. But these are not essential to answer the question of what a new zygote is. Just because a zygote, like a new born baby, might one day be self-aware and have a mind, those remain possibilities, not actualities in the meat at those stages. The actuality in the meat is at least the unique DNA, along with the fact that it is unique DNA making it a whole organism as opposed to a human kidney or appendix.

It’s really quite simple. An organism has a beginning middle and end both in time and in space. The beginning in time is the moment of conception. A unique organism begins to take up space upon its conception. All the things that this human zygote may or may not become or do won’t change what it is.

Bugs might have some kind of primitive minds, but probably not. — RogueAI

Does a human being have a mind when it is sleeping? Even a primitive one?
How about when it is knocked unconscious? It is not “brain dead” but it cannot be roused. Is there a “mind” there.

Are unconscious states, such as sleeping and unconsciousness, are these states and time periods during which no “person” is present?

How is a person present in a body that cannot wake up? Due to drinking alcohol and passing out?

Do you really want to require certain behavior of a human being, such as “minding”, be present before you see essential qualities present upon which we can legislate pregnancy? We are going to tell pregnant women when they can and can’t kill fetuses. You are saying “mind” makes the difference?

And how about a dog or a chimp, do they have minds?

brain-dead children — RogueAI

So, by your logic, you are saying a brain dead child is not a human being. Is that right?

Mrs. Smith is a bunch of cells and a mind. Any minded organism trumps any mindless organism, like a zygote. — RogueAI

So the equation is bunch of cells plus a mind equals a human being? Is that the magic formula? No mind, no human being?

Watch anything by Jeffrey Kaplan on YouTube. He’s got whole intro to philosophy courses online and he’s great to watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JFfIQJsUFL4

My approach, then, is not to try and settle the issue of whether the developing entity is a person or not and then extract the moral implications of this; rather it is to take what our reason tells us about the morality of abortions and extract from this a conclusion about the status of the developing entity. — Clearbury

Hi Clearbury, welcome.

I could easily be misunderstanding, but I think I have to disagree. I don’t think you can reason about morality without some concrete matter in hand to be moral about. And to have a concrete matter in hand, you must have already defined for yourself certain terms (such as “human being” and even “new human being”).

Morality is the morality of actions, and actions are in a physical, shared world that requires us to define objects and transact with those objects among other human beings. We need multiple human beings, individuals interacting, before we can make moral statements about, for example, killing them as good or bad, or stealing from them as good or bad, etc. I don’t see how you start by evaluating what our “reason tells us about the morality of abortion” without already defining the objects involved in an abortion. Just saying “abortion” shows we already started somewhere that is clearly specific and full of definitions and objects; “abortion” delineates as distinct: women, pregnancy, fetuses, removal before birth, and fetuses that would otherwise become a baby. If we don’t define these terms in some way (and I suggest the clearest and most precise manner we can muster), how would we know how to apply any moral analysis at any stage in a pregnancy? As an example, If the developing entity is not a person, no moral question even arises to evaluate. We don’t wonder about the morality of killing a kidney (at least not in the same way as the morality of aborting an 8-month old human fetus).

I do think we can stipulate the question “what is a person?” We can say for sake of argument, a fetus at 4 weeks is not a person but a fetus at 8 months is a person. We can then create our morality around all the permutations that might arise within those definitions. Or we can try to refine our definitions…and then refine our moral reasoning…

But we always need the definitions of the involved parties and objects and processes, or some general parameters for each, in order to develop the morality. Otherwise, to me, we may only be using bad facts to develop a bad morality.

This is the process used in the sciences, where theories are compared not just against each other but against how things are. — Banno

And science is the process where we inquire about what a human being is, what a pregnancy is, comparing newborns to adults to zygotes. Science, like metaphysics, physics and biology, theory of mind, psychology, but in the context of abortion, really mostly biology and medicine.

In ethics we compare the theory against how things ought be. The point of doing ethics is that how things are never tells us how things ought to be. We have to decide that for ourselves. — Banno

I agree that morality and ethics are a separate inquiry, where we take what science tells us, whatever we now agree is most rational/factual/state of affairs, develop our ethical/moral/legal norms, and apply them to the state of affairs. We say “this a pregnant woman and as a human being, she is entitled to many rights, and ought be treated as all human beings ought be treated.”

So how should things be? Well, for one thing, a bunch of cells ought not be evaluated as of the same worth as Mrs Smith. Mrs Smith has qualities not had by the cyst that qualify her as of greater value. If a theory does not agree with this evaluation, it has gone astray. — Banno

Mrs. Smith is a bunch of cells. Calling a human zygote a bunch of cells or a cyst doesn’t say anything.

Saying Mrs. Smith “has qualities not had by the [zygote cyst creature you call it]” is an assertion about what a human being is, but it’s not an argument.

Are you saying that only entities who demonstrate certain “qualities” that are of “greater value” shall be recognized as human beings? (That’s a scientific question.)

Or are you saying that a human zygote is a human being, and Mrs. Smith is a human being, but because Smith at the later stage has these high value qualities, and the zygote human doesn’t, we can kill the zygote anyway due to some moral law manipulation and exception creation surrounding the prohibition against killing human beings? (That’s the moral/legal question?)

The monotony of this for all of us is that some pretend the science to talk about ethics, and others pretend the ethics to talk about science. No one is attempting to simply get it right.

And we should do the science first. Who cares about abortions in the first month if we metaphysicians and biologists can say “a 4 week old human fetus can’t be a human being because all humans must have A, B, and C, and a zygote doesn’t have any of those.”??

The answer to when in the unfolding of time does a new human being come into being (such that we can no longer kill it morally) is an essential part of this debate, because only after there is any human being can there possibly be a life of any sort or value that could be be treated immorally.

So let me ask you the scientific question: Does a brand spanking new born baby have enough of the same high value qualities as Mrs. Smith, that it makes sense to protect them both as human beings, as persons (which the whole world already does)?? Why are new babies more special than “cysts” or the human zygote stage? What are the qualities of living bunches of cells that cross the threshold and have to be called “human beings” and when in the history of any of us adult humans does that threshold get crossed?

I’m hoping you to choose some behavior and functioning (some qualities is better) occurring after conception and before natural, adult death.

I’d be surprised if the human qualities you state, beyond having human DNA, will include both a newborn baby (which is more like a plant, or like a fetus without its needed uterus/ life support system) and Mrs. Smith? What human qualities cover the adult and the newborn but leave out the human zygote? Maybe some abortions do not involve killing human beings (at 3 weeks) while others do (at 8 months)? So what are the high value qualities of human being that cover both? Or should we be making it legal to kill unwanted baby children? I’m open to those discussions if the science takes us there.

Yes. It would be wrong to kill sufficiently intelligent extra-terrestrial life, even though they are not human. — Michael

So the moral pivot point for right killing and wrong killing for you is “intelligence”?

Is that your position?

It's wrong to kill me because I am a sufficiently intelligent organism. — Michael

That’s it? You are sufficiently intelligent?

This has nothing to do with laws regulating when and how you can and can’t conduct an abortion.

I’m not going to waste time figuring out “because you are human”. There is a law already - it is wrong to kill a human. That’s the law we are grappling with. Is a a 7-month fetus one of those same things that the law already applies to. Forget “because” word game issues. Be honest.

It’s not a word game to a pregnant mom. Help her think it through.

What kind of animal it is has nothing to do with the conventions of the English language. — Michael

You are just playing epistemology games and post modern metaphysician.

So no one can know or say anything about the “real world”. That’s your answer. Probably resolves the discussion with anyone who disagrees with you (at least in your mind).

Impossible to argue with the “word game” resolution to the question of what a particular thing may actually be.

But the government isn’t playing word games. They are assisting some people with killing fetuses and punishing others for doing the same thing based on physical evidence like a dead fetus and calling it a “human being” and a “person” in order to apply laws against homicide.

So you might want to get in the game.

I've addressed it. The question makes no sense in context. The term "human being" isn't like the term "bachelor" with an explicit set of necessary and sufficient conditions; it's more like the word "game".

Either way, what does zygotes being or not being human have to do with whether or not it is wrong to kill zygotes? — Michael

Are you serious?

A human being in the context of abortion is at least a body, clearly able to be defined and delimited. Body like a pregnant mom. Body like a fetus that can be distinguished from the mom, scraped out and thrown away.

A human being is the thing that pops into existence at birth. No need to delve deeper once it is born. It’s that thing. No more gaming is needed in the context of abortion. The lawmakers and doctors and mothers are done with the hand-wringing at that point. The little bundle of popping joy is the same human being as all of us adults.

Separately, most people agree it is usually bad to intentionally kill human beings. Throwing a newborn baby out a 5 story window would be bad, for instance. It is bad, so they say, because the newborn is a human being and, so they say, killing human beings is bad. (That’s a logical argument.)

So, some people wonder if maybe, aborting a 7 month pregnancy might be like throwing a baby out a window, for instance. Hence the debate.

1. Are zygotes human? — Michael

No. Are human zygotes human beings?

Unless that is the question you haven’t entered the abortion debate.

And you sound like an essentialist every time you point to some distinct object. Like a zygote.

When it's a foetus call it a foetus. When it's a baby call it a baby. — Michael

When it’s born, the government calls it a human being. Are they right about that?

You need to abandon this essentialist view of the world and language. — Michael

Not if you are a lawmaker making policy on when a woman can and cannot decide what to do with her own pregnancy.

Ridiculous argument.

According to you, there could never be a controversy surrounding any abortion. It’s just word games and platonic form manipulation easily avoided by playing other word games.

But there is a controversy if you haven’t noticed. It’s about the essence of a physical object that is either aborted or carried to term at which point it is recognized in all governments as a human being. And it’s about the balancing of the rights between a pregnant human mother and a pre-born human being. If it’s not a pre-born human being, there is no controversy (or the controversy would be resolved), and if you establish or stipulate that it is a human being, then you get into the balancing act.

You are basically avoiding the whole discussion.