Let’s be careful and precise. We are philosophers here.

I recognize the image on the right [new born human baby] as a person. — praxis

So an instance of a “new born human baby” (which can be depicted as you’ve depicted it), equals an instance of “a person”. Recognizing a new born baby is recognizing a person.

That answers one of my questions directly and I appreciate that.

But the question isn’t really answered without some of your reasoning because if a human zygote is NOT recognized as a person, but a new born baby IS recognized as a person, you must have some sense of what a “person” means in order to not recognize those meanings in a human zygote. So what does a “person” mean such that you recognize these meanings in a new born baby but not a zygote?

Basically, why do you think a new born baby is a person? What “personal” things are you recognizing about a new born baby?

If you say no the newborn is not a person, that seems consistent with saying a zygote is not a person either, as both of them are nothing like an adult human that we call a person. If you say yes, a newborn is a person, that seems inconsistent with saying an adult is a person but a zygote is not, so if you say “yes” I’d appreciate your reasoning. — Fire Ologist

We don’t need to go through every aspect of personhood do we? — praxis

Absolutely not. Probably a bottomless pit.

But, won’t you just say, whatever the qualities are that make whatever a person is, a newborn baby is (or is not) a person?

If you say no the newborn is not a person, that seems consistent with saying a zygote is not a person either, as both of them are nothing like an adult human that we call a person. If you say yes, a newborn is a person, that seems inconsistent with saying an adult is a person but a zygote is not, so if you say “yes” I’d appreciate your reasoning.

Your question about two identical twin human zygotes and whether they can both be persons if there is no way to distinguish them is a good one and interesting. But if you would:

You said person is like intelligence
[or as you put it “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”] . Ok, so a fetus can’t structurally have “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition” until it has a certain brain and that brain does certain things. [so a fetus can’t be a person yet]. True [consistent], but let’s consistently apply the working theory. If a person is the happening of intelligence [or “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”], then is a baby a person? Am I a person when I am sleeping and not dreaming? I think the consistent answer has to be no. When I am sleeping, I don’t have an intellect [or “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”]. I don’t even have an “I”. Without consciousness, the brain isn’t doing that which generates the activity or process or intellect labeled as “person”. The person already is not there, not yet formed, when consciousness isn’t turned on for any reason, so that human body is not a “person” anymore.

So can you explain how the distinction between person and human being discussed above is wrong, or wrongly applied to sleeping babies for instance, or, if not, refute that it is inconsistent to point to a baby or an unconscious human body or a human zygote, and say that it’s a person? — Fire Ologist

Basically, the same question from way way back that I’ve asked multiple people over and over to directly address in any way: If a human zygote is not a “person” and a human adult is a “person”,is a human newborn baby a “person” and please explain your answer either way in light of the above quote.

Did you really need someone to explain that? — praxis

No. I relied on it to make my point and ask a question that hasn’t been addressed. I bolded it so you wouldn’t miss it:

person is like intelligence
[or as you put it “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”] . Ok, so a fetus can’t structurally have “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition” until it has a certain brain and that brain does certain things. [so a fetus can’t be a person yet]. True [consistent], but let’s consistently apply the working theory. If a person is the happening of intelligence [or “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”], then is a baby a person? Am I a person when I am sleeping and not dreaming? I think the consistent answer has to be no. When I am sleeping, I don’t have an intellect [or “aspects of existence tied to social, moral, or individual recognition”]. I don’t even have an “I”. Without consciousness, the brain isn’t doing that which generates the activity or process or intellect labeled as “person”. The person already is not there, not yet formed, when consciousness isn’t turned on for any reason, so that human body is not a “person” anymore. — Fire Ologist

How is that not consistent? Babies aren’t people either then? Which is fine if you want to be consistent.

And what do you mean by “aspects”? “Aspects of existence”? How is that meaningful to you? And what is “individual recognition” anyway?

When does “individual recognition” become an “aspect” of “existence”? Something adult persons do in their sleep?

I'm not interested in teaching you English. — Michael

Am I being unreasonable or something? Is this forum only a verbal boxing ring? Everyone more interested in connecting with punches.

Can’t we make something more of it?

These could be good conversations. Maybe 200 years from now some grad student writing a thesis on when essentialism finally died will cite “Michael, from TPF, circa 2025 - On the ‘Human’” because you made such a good argument.

Is an English lesson really all you think I need, or are you just shrugging me off? Or what did I do wrong again?? Or what is wrong with you?

I am actually interested in how you and others think.

And before sending me away from the forum to get the English class I needed, you didn’t even attempt to make an argument. It’s your forum.

You may be right that I can’t say the things I say about a person and/or a human being. You may be right, along with Witttgenstein, that seeking “essence” is a wrong turn, a linguistically caused misunderstanding, and think that any pregnant woman who would ask you when you think her fetus might have to be considered a human being would be better off rethinking her question instead of trying to answer it.

You might be right.

But I don’t think it’s that simple, at all. And just asserting things isn’t doing philosophy, and isn’t having a dialogue. This is a forum to dialogue, correct?

I admit, I am emotional and come off as belittling sometimes. So maybe it’s my own fault that I get treated like this (ie - “I’m not teaching you English”), but I think I’m mostly being reasonable, and my rough edge is usually in response to people treating me like a fool. (ie, showing me pictures of a an adult human being and a clump of cells and telling me if I can’t see that the whole abortion debate is thereby resolved, I need my eyes fixed.). Give me the slightest break.

This is the perfect scenario for you to educate, in arguments, about what you know, or what I need to unlearn, or to show me how I never knew what I thought I knew. Or just try to exchange ideas. Why smack that down with insulting shrug offs?

Cash your arguments out. I’m listening for it. I think this is fun and interesting and important.

——————-

So back on topic, “human” and “swimmer” mean different things.

Got it on its face. I speak English natively too. I am swimmer and I’m not a soldier. “Human” can be used many different ways.

But when you say “mean” do you simply mean they are words used in different contexts for different purposes? Or do you mean, they point to or name different objects, or types of objects? What do you mean by “mean” when you say these words mean different things?

(Also, to be clear, “swimmer”, “person” and “soldier” are fairly strictly nouns, whereas “human” can also be used as an adjective, so I assume you meant to say “a human being and swimmer” mean two different things, or “a human and person” mean two different things. I don’t want to misunderstand you because of a typo or small lack of clarity.)

Are you just saying human is an adjective and person is a noun? (Sounds like English class!)

But back to “mean”.
Can I say: “we use the word ‘swimmer’ to point to or refer to or mean a being in the physical world, like a fish or a dolphin, or Michael Phelps”? Swimming is a physical activity, and a swimmer is a doer in the physical world. Would you say something similar to these things? “Mean” here means “point to in the physical world.”

The reason I ask is, if you would use “swimmer” only in reference to physical states of affairs, does “human being” point to something in the physical world too? Or no?

How about person - is that physical (likely not). I don’t think “person” is a “thing” to you, like a “dolphin” or “Michael Phelps swimming” might be a thing in the physical world to you. But if we name a “human being” and point to some being, is that a being in a physical sense?

Or is it only some kind of category only, like “homo sapien”? In which case a human means something different than a swimmer, as one is a universal type categorization device and the other is a thing in a pool?

I’m trying to get at what is the best word to use to have this conversation to point to the adult thing that gets pregnant in her physical sense. She may be more (and I may not know all of the things about her be they physical or whatever), but we need a word we can both agree on that refers to all pregnant women in their full valuable state. We need a word for all that matters about adult human person thing. Or else what are we talking about and how are we talking about it. What word do you want use here?

I have been using “human being” and “person” interchangably because, the point I’m trying to make, is that the whole abortion debate is about bodies acting on bodies. A distinction between “human being” and “person” only matters if you can physically kill or not kill one of them because it’s a body, and not possibly physically kill the other because it is not a body. (Kill because of the abortion context). I’m not interested in something that can’t be killed because it is not a body. If we can’t use a knife to isolate and kill the mind, or cut the intellect or the “person” or the “category human”, then all those things are not relevant to the physical act of abortion or any physical act. Abortion, under my argument, kills a human body (whole organism, not like just a kidney which isn’t an organism), and killing a human body is killing a person’s body, or killing a human being.

The body part of the equation subsumes person/human being distinctions for me, and makes them functionally equivalent terms. What do you want me to call the organism?

What is the fetus is a biological question first. Abortions are physical acts first. What is the adult is biological question. There are no adult mountains (see, I speak some English). Only living biological entities, without metaphor, can be called “adult” or “fetal” at the time of abortion. So I don’t think it is relevant to discuss “persons” if they are souls, or intellects, or minds, or bundles of attributes, or functions of a brain, or happenings in adult brains, unless you can show that this “person” thing comes later than the “human being” thing, and some human being things are not persons, or not yet persons. If you want to make a distinction between being a person and being a human being, IN THE FETUS OR THE ADULT (not an alien or other hominid because those are not at issue) that’s fine, but then you need to show where in the physical world, the world of abortions, this person fits in.

When does “person” or “human being” happen so that it matters in discussion about abortion. That’s the money time period or moment.

Maybe you have said this. You said person is like intelligence. Ok, so a fetus can’t structurally have an intellect until it has a certain brain and that brain does certain things. True, but let’s consistently apply the working theory. If a person is the happening of intelligence, then is a baby a person? Am I a person when I am sleeping and not dreaming? I think the consistent answer has to be no. When I am sleeping, I don’t have an intellect. I don’t even have an “I”. Without consciousness, the brain isn’t doing that which generates the activity or process or intellect labeled as “person”. The person already is not there, not yet formed, when consciousness isn’t turned on for any reason, so that human body is not a “person” anymore.

So can you explain how the distinction between person and human being discussed above is wrong, or wrongly applied to sleeping babies for instance, or, if not, refute that it is inconsistent to point to a baby or an unconscious human body and say that it’s a person?

I am trying to have an honest conversation for my part. I am interested in challenging my thoughts and my reasoning. That should be obvious to you as I keep throwing out all of this content hoping for the reasoned, philosophical counter point. I see someone who thinks differently than me, like you and others, and I want to see how they might be reasonable too, which challenges me to question why I think what I think.

English class. Really? All we all need is a good dictionary and the abortion discussion is over?

"Human" and "solider" mean different things.
"Human" and "swimmer" mean different things.
"Human" and "person" mean different things. — Michael

Here is what is so difficult: how do you know they mean different things? Can’t you use words to define them in some way?

e.g. if it is an alien, — Michael

I hate to say it, but this is a non sequitur. A straw man. You are just pointing to more undefined, ambiguous “things”.

My claim is that being human has no unambiguous set of necessary and sufficient conditions. — Michael

So you will say “human” means something different than “soldier”, which means to me you must be able to set out some condition, even just one condition would be sufficient, to show a difference between what “human” and”soldier” mean - you can do that - but for “being human” you can’t even begin to define it. Although you know a human zygote cannot be called a human being.

The gradual evolution from non-human to human was just that; gradual. — Michael

Agreed, although I’m not sure what method you used to identify some “non-human” bunch of beings that gradually grew into “human beings”.
By raising evolution, you really just restate the problem over a longer period of time. You need some necessary conditions that allows you to put beings into those two different buckets.

Instead of millions and hundreds of thousands of years, what if the life of a human being was 15 seconds long? Pregnancy lasted two seconds and boom the infant pops out, grows through childhood to old age and dies in 15 seconds. Would it still make sense yo draw a line between whatever such a being is at 1 second compared to whatever you want to call it at 10 seconds? Would we still want to say this creature didn’t start its short life until sometime after 2 or 3 seconds?

We can say at one extreme that we are human and at another extreme that Homo heidelbergensis were not human (if by "human" we mean "Homo sapiens"), but in between there's a large grey area where any designation as being a member of the one species or the other (or some intermediate species) is arbitrary. — Michael

Spreading the same issue out over millions of years and just replacing the ambiguous zygote with the ambiguous Homo heidelbergensis, and replacing the ambiguous adult human being with what you now refer to as any human being that evolved, doesn’t really help your point.

I get that we have a starting point where there is no human being, and an end point where we clearly have a human being, and that the motion from non-human thing (like some pre-hominid ape) to human being (like Mrs. Smith), is a gray swirling mess of ambiguity, but, since people are asking me about when we can or maybe can’t terminate pregnancies, about when was the time period that we get critical mass, I press on into the gray swirling mess.

It just seems weird to be able to say you obviously value a pregnant adult woman, and obviously do t value her human zygote, but then say there are no conditions you will make necessary in defining “human being” when you wrap your arms fully around the woman to hug her in a tough time, and wrap the scalpel fully around the human zygote being.

It’s a dance that takes advantage of the gray motion of biological growth, here in order to assert things like there is no essence, or a “human zygote” means something totally different than a “human being” and human beings are organisms whose beginnings are gray enough that it makes sense to you to honor and value it as an adult, but kill it without any concern when it is gray.

It’s all just full of holes to me. Life is ambiguous. 2+2 may always equal 4, but we don’t see all the equations. In the meantime, new adults pop on the scene. When does that happen - probably sometime between 16 and 30 years of age, depending on how you define “adult”.

And in the meantime, pregnant women want advice from their doctors - should I get an abortion, what is the procedure like, how long does it take, will it hurt me, what do you do with the fetus afterwards, what is the law on time frames - these all need answers. Some women ask whether the fetus will feel pain, or is it a human being, or when does it become a person even. They want to make a fully informed decision and, since their own moms carried zygotes to term once, they think it’s a legitimate question.

Your answer to these latter questions seems to be “who the hell knows, that’s up to you to figure out, I mean intelligent aliens would be persons, and Homo Heidelbergensis is in the mix, but just look at a picture of a zygote - an ugly clump of cells. I won’t conjecture when that clump might begin to be personal or human or intelligent or a soldier. But you, Mrs. pregnant Smith, you are certainly a valuable human being and a person with intelligence - for some reason, I can say that much.”

Brutal.

It's not the amorphous nature of the concept that makes it essentialist, it's the immortal nature — praxis

Things that don't change are dead. — praxis

Are you saying immortal equals unchanging?

Why is that?

But doesn’t seem relevant to essentialism either.

Do you think essences immortal or something?

How will any of this move the ball regarding what abortions you like and which ones you don’t?

the words "human" and "person" mean different things — Michael

Can you say this without using the word “things” because that makes me think you might be able to point to a person, and separately point to a human being.

They mean different things. Are they each a thing at all?

The distinction between human being and person may to you be like a distinction between “an organism with 46 chromosomes” and “intelligence”.

All you “person” people have to do is admit there is no “person” present in a newborn. That’s fine. Would be consistent. You can still love and value your babies, but to call them “persons” if that means “intelligence” is bullshit.

In this context — Michael

A doctor identifies a 7.5 month old fetus meeting specific criteria so that he can remove it without removing too much more during an abortion.

A prosecutor says the doctor violated the law and murdered a person, because the law says after the close of 6th month the fetus shall be treated as a person, having met the criteria of being a human fetus more than 6 months old.

The doctor defends he hasn’t met the necessary and sufficient criteria for “murder” because he only intended to save the life of the mother…

Roe v. Wade case spent a lot of time considering this.

And it’s not a taxonomy question.

The only reason anyone cares at all about the abortion procedure is because people think it’s a person, think it’s not a person, or don’t know.

The only reason people think it might be a person is because biologists and doctors show us before we could walk and talk, we used to be a zygote.

Saying the metaphysics are linguistic problems will never help the doctor defend a charge of murder or the lawmaker, or most women who haven’t decided yet what they think about abortion.

Why can’t souls be as amorphous as whatever else we are talking about?
— Fire Ologist

I think they can be. — praxis

:victory:

Ok, just above, you said Catholics have to be essentialist because Catholics believe in an immortal soul.
I then said that this doesn’t follow as there is nothing about the amorphous term soul that requires belief in essentialism.
You agreed they can be amorphous.

So then are you agreeing with me that you did not make a good enough argument about Catholics and essentialism? Maybe Catholics are essentialist, but you haven’t shown that yet, correct?

You willing to acknowledge me as a partner in a conversation?

That would be a victory for us both, and for this thread.

…souls..be as amorphous as whatever…
— Fire Ologist

I think they can be. — praxis

Your words. Agreeing with my words

You either just concede on this tiny point, or you should provide a lot of ‘splaining on how you still made a point despite the amorphousness of the “soul” concept, which is fine if you want.

But I hope you just agree because I really don’t think the Catholic/soul speak will be fruitful here.

You believe that using words is essentialism? — praxis

No. But can you say otherwise? I presume you can’t because you won’t say what essentialism essentially is.

And there is no logical connection between essentialism and belief in a soul - what are you talking about? That can’t be why a Catholic cannot reject essentialism. Why can’t souls be as amorphous as whatever else we are talking about?

Maybe Catholics really are essentialists, but you need to do more to support this.

You keep getting nowhere with me, or towards advancing any interesting point.

Essentially, — praxis

:rofl: So you are an essentialist too! Like the Catholics.

How about starting with whether or not you reject essentialism? — praxis

I’m not doing anymore work for you.

Define essentialism. Tell me how it is relevant in your mind to a conversation regarding abortion.

Roman Catholicism
The Roman Catholic view is that baptism is necessary for salvation and that it frees the recipient from original sin. Roman Catholic tradition teaches that unbaptized infants, not being freed from original sin, go to Limbo (Latin: limbus infantium), which is an afterlife condition distinct from Hell. — praxis

But I am speaking with you now. So, this is utterly meaningless drivel and I wouldn't even know where to start to take another step in such a conversation.

Catholics have an idea and you claim to be a Catholic. — praxis

That’s dumb. No they don’t.

We trust God on the issues we can’t use our own reason and senses to sort out.

Where do souls go? They remain in God’s hands as they are all along.

Do you think you know me, or Catholics now? Have I said anything that has meaning to you? Doesn’t seem like it.

Again, what is your point in speaking to me?

Where do the souls of aborted babies go? What would a soul of an embryo frozen for centuries experience? — RogueAI

In this attempted conversation regarding whether we can or even need to identify a functional use for the word “human being” that is relevant to the question of why someone would be pro-life, I don’t think the introduction of the term “soul” is going to be anything but a catastrophe.

My answer in the context of this discussion is - I don’t have any idea if “souls” ever “go” at all, let alone where or how they would go when bodies die, as in when a fetus is destroyed in an abortion.

In this context, I would just think of a soul as a euphemism for “person” as in “how many souls went into the water when the Titanic sunk.” We are still trying to come to terms with “person” or “human being.”

Fair enough?

you’re an essentialist wrt to fundamental particles. — Johnnie

I keep telling these guys there are fairy essences hiding in the assertions they are making. I think it is because they are not being careful with their language mostly. But ultimately, I think it’s because they are dealing with mind-independent facts, like fundamental particles, for instance, like the rest of us are.

You don't seem to understand what essentialism is if that it your response to that particular use of the term "essential". — Michael

True, you wouldn’t be able to put a box around what I understand from that one sentence - it could mean anything.

But the last line of the article comparing early and later Witt:

“In other words, the grand question of interpreting
Wittgenstein, i.e., the question of continuities or
breaks, remains at the forefront of understanding
Wittgenstein.”

The question of continuities or breaks.

Remains.

Maybe Wittgenstein didn’t really know what Wittgenstein meant either. And if that was his point, we all need more therapy, because the questions remain for many of us who have read Wittgenstein.

Resemblance requires something like the black, the white and the grey to be used meaningfully, or to have use if that makes you feel better about my adherence to proper grammar found in this game.

I don’t know why you think I’m not in the same game with you here. As if if a mere assertion “you don’t know what essentialism means” deserves nothing more. As if none of what I said is not specifically what Wittgenstein was trying to address.

In the opening of the article: “…the Augustinian picture of language which might be correct but which is, nevertheless, strictly limited because it ignores the essential role of action in establishing…”

Painful. Wish those making non-essentialist points would stop making essential distinctions.

I studied Wittgenstein. But I’ll keep reading if it is for the purpose of continuing the discussion. After all I said above, are you just fed up or unwilling to teach me yourself, handing me over to Wittgenstein?

beard vs being clean-shaven. What's the point at which whisker growth constitutes a beard? — Relativist

Spot on, great discussion.

What process did you use to identify "beard"? Or "clean shaven"? In order to look for the gray, fuzzy relationship that may or may not exist between the two, you demarked a clear, black and white difference between a bearded and a clean-shaven face. What did you do there? That process is what I am trying to apply to the concept of "me" meaning a bi-pedal hominid stinking up the earth.

You invoked "beard" and "not-beard" and pointed in two different directions with these invocations. What allows you to do that and convey any significance to some third party like me who has to look for differences and make my own demarcations all by myself? You can't say "clean shaven" is more like "not-beard" and "beard" is more like "not clean shaven" without saying "beard" and "clean shaven" are different, otherwise you would not be able to point to a gray fuzzy relationship between "beard" and "clean-shaven", AND, I couldn't see what you are saying if there was in fact, no difference between a beard and clean-shaven, OR, I couldn't see what you are saying if you were not constructing a black and white difference between beard and clean-shaven in your language.

You acknowledge the concept is fuzzy, and yet you think it should be possible to identify a point at which a human life begins. — Relativist

I'm not saying fertilization doesn't occur in time. There is a fuzzy border at every turn for us. If it sounds like I am somehow relying on the notion that persons pop into existence in an instant, I'm not. I have been calling it "the moment of conception" so I can see why you might think the temporal duration is important to my argument. But that time can be longer and include some additional steps besides fertilization. I am positing my own counter-arguments that allow for the development of the person from not-person over time, but in order to do that, I have to say what a person is at any point.

At some point in time we no longer see the gray, and black or white emerges, or we never get beyond the gray. We either see clearly that an animal such as a human being, is different than a hurricane, or we don't and the black and white swirls back to gray. But the way I see it, in order to have black, we also need not-black; in order to have gray we need black; in order to have white we need gray; in order to have black and white and we need gray; in order to have gray we need black and white; in order to have white we need black.... Or is there only gray? In which case a beard and a clean-shaven face are both a zygote, which is a person, or an ice-cream truck?

You have a sperm with 23 chromosomes and an egg with 23 chromosomes before fertilization. After fertilization you no longer have a sperm and an egg (like no more clean face), and instead have a 46 chromosome new thing (like a beard). While the first two chromosomes of the sperm attach to the first two chromosomes of the egg, and the third chromosome of each is beginning to attach, can we call it a sperm or an egg anymore? Do we have a half-human/half non-human thing?

And with that, I've just deconstructed of the notion of "moment" of conception for you. There is a duration of time during which any change occurs and we are talking about the change in our history from things that are not people (like zygotes in many arguments) to things that are people (like Mrs. Smith). But because duration is a reality and "moment" is a fabrication, have I deconstructed my whole argument? I don't think so. There is still a difference between a growing zygote (black) and an adult person (white) that I need to explain (unfortunately, always using gray terms).

I'm open to an argument that the gray fuzzy period of time could be from conception to brain-stem formation, or from conception to consciousness formation, or self-awareness formation, or language formation, or concept formation, or adult conversation formation. Maybe it takes 20 years for a "person" to come to be in time. Lay those arguments on me.

But I can't abandon the notion of a "person" entirely and make any of these arguments. And neither can you, and neither are you abandoning the concept of "person".

Banno and Michael, and now you with the beard and the clean-shaven face, keep pointing to differences. Nobody is arguing that there is no difference between an adult organism and a fetal organism. (There are many differences between two adults.) So we all seem to agree that there is "difference" in our experience. I certainly agree with all of you that there are differences.

I think we would disagree that saying "there are differences" is a metaphysical statement, and that metaphysics is science, and that science is a pursuit of objectivity we share. But I agree with you that there are differences in the world in itself.

An essentialist, to me, takes those differences and tries to apply them to substances hiding on either side of the demarcation line now called the difference. They see some fuzzy line between a beard and clean-shaven and say things like: "the essence of clean-shaven is no whiskers visible, allowing for direct slapping of the skin when the face is being slapped" for instance. They think they don't need to compare "clean-shaven" to anything else or refer to the beard at all, and think the essence of clean-shaven can be found with the in-itself of the clean-shaven face. The essence of clean-shaven-ness. A non-essentialist, to me, takes the differences and sees them only by the comparison. There is no way to look at just the clean-shaven face, and understand what a clean-shaven face is; you have to hold it up to its context to even begin to see why we might say "clean" or "shaven", and see the beard along with the clean in order to proceed to identify a difference between the two. The default is everything is the same one, and the break from that lies in between multiple same ones, not some fairy essence in the multiplicity.

But the different approaches to meaningful speech (essentialist or non-essentialist) about face maintenance are, to me, semantic. Both types of discussion are recognizing the same fact of difference between one thing and another thing, they only place the significance of that difference in a different location - an essentialist sees it in the two things, a non-essentialist sees it somewhere between the two now amorphous "things". Same meaning to the same topic of the same discussion, just two different semantical devices to get there.

I happen to think the non-essentialist process is the better process. It is why we rarely find a clear line between anything. It is why Heraclitus was the wisest of them all. It is why Aristotle is easy to dismiss (although he was the second-wisest). It is why Kant's phenomenal veil will always be pulled over our eyes. It is why Hegel may be the third wisest. It is why eastern thinkers who take essence and show how it must implode as it crystalizes are also wise...

But there is no speaking, no significance to any word, if we don't acknowledge gray, fuzzy lines of difference. It is easier to talk in essentialist terms, so essentialism is more like a tool of language.

You have to sound like an essentialist to say "beard versus clean-shaven" at all. To avoid essentialist speak is to conduct tiresome linguistic acrobatics to bring us to the same place anyway - the difference between this and that.

What I don't think, is that, because the line between beard and clean-shaven is fuzzy, there is no such thing as "beard" or "clean-shaven" either. At least for a time, for some duration, differences hold between face and not-face, or clean and not-clean. I don't abandon the mind-independent, physical, objective, world just because I have such epistemological and metaphysical difficulties, as well as perceptual difficulties of sensation, with grasping or even just experiencing it. I still see difference, (like you all keep seeming to see as well), and I see more to that difference on either side of the difference. The line between beard and clean-shaven, as well as the beard, and the clean-shaveness, these are all fuzzy. But in order for me to maintain the concept that a "a beard is, and it is different than clean-shaven" I have to admit I am recognizing something clearly, in black, not-white, as well.

And if I want to talk about this at all, I have to sound like an essentialist. Like you did when you simply pointed to "beard." Here is an example of sounding like an essentialist:

Essentialism is false. — Michael

There must be an essence to essentialism in order to put a box around it and file it under the "false" category of judgment, or in order to just say "essentialism is". OR, non-essentially speaking, there must be a comparable difference between essentialism and something else (anything else, everything else) in order to point away from whatever essentialism is to some thing else. Otherwise, there is no significance to saying "essentialism" at all, and nothing has been said.

We need the differences in order to make any moves, both when crossing the room, or laying out a sentence.

Don't call the significance of these differences anything "essential" if you want. Instead, take the effort to have a conversation otherwise, but you haven't refuted the fact that there are persons in the world, independent of us all, who are distinct from grapefruit and soda, and that only by recognizing black and white clear differences can you say this, or make sentences that attempt to refute it.

There is a lot more to say before the above could really be recognized as an important part of the abortion playing board, but the prosecution will adjourn for lunch.

Six months is pretty extreme. — praxis

Fine. Your are talking public policy. Make it 4 months. We’ll call it the Praxis rule.

the Catholic faith — praxis

Is this confession? Or are you a canon lawyer? Why would I think you could understand what I am saying at this point?

Divorce is a legal process. I don’t see any reason to change policy there.
There is no divorce allowed in the Catholic Church.
So others can get a divorce, but I won’t, because I agree with the Catholic Church.

Same thing with abortion policy.

Splaining done.

Is there anyone here who rejects essentialism and opposes abortion? — Banno

Is there anyone here who rejects essentialism and opposes anything?

You got some splaining ta do. — praxis

Explain what? To whom?
You worried about whether I am contradicting myself again, or whether I might be a servant of Satan, hiding in the Catholic Church?

Scientism and essentialism might be seen as things that dissipate with experience. — Banno

That was clever. But still doesn't explain Praxis' immaturity. Only mine maybe.

public policy. It is understandable that the sort of religious person you described would want to stop people from killing zygotes, and there's no reason why they can't try to influence public policy. — Relativist

So my question everyone wants to point out how difficult it is to ask, and how difficult it is to answer, is: what is a human being/person and when does it first come into being?

Pro-choice is a public moniker for what I would call Pro-abortion rights. Because we need to make public policy, and the above question is philosophically deep and no one will ever agree on this (or even talk about it), I choose the “pro-choice” public policy route with certain limitations. Everyone get's to ask these questions for themselves and up to like 6 months or so, when most agree the fetal thing should start to feel pain or has some sort of experience, up until then, they can answer it any way they like. Or they can completely avoid these questions, assert that they don't value 2 week old blastocysts or 2 month old fetuses, etc, or just say they don't even care to think about it, they just don't want to be pregnant and have an abortion. Be done with the public policy by compromise where abortion for any reason is allowed until the fetus becomes some sort of thing that should be protected by the state. And be done with it.

Now back to the question.

No rule, no definition of "individual human being" can work universally because "individual human being" is fundamentally a fuzzy concept. — Relativist

I agree, no definition of "individual human being" works to make a public policy based on that definition, because its fuzzy and no one agrees on the less fuzzy parts even. But if we were to all agree that abortion would remain legal forever, even up to the moment of birth, carve the law in stone and make it a constitutional amendment, is anyone still interested in being a philosopher and answering the question of when my life or his life or her life actually begins? Just for curiosity sake? Anyone?

Seems just weird for someone to say he didn't always exist (which he didn't) but that he won't even conjecture on which point or time period in history when he'd have to say he started existing.

Just no way out? We're here. We're human. Got over it.

Any keywords that would help me discover the secret? — praxis

Immaturity.

Can anyone else say that what a person is, or what a human being is, and most importantly, when either one of these pops into existence?
— Fire Ologist

No. — Banno

So is this because:
no one can say it?
no one can know it to then say of it?
nothing can be known?
or, there is no such moment (or time frame) when I first existed?

Seems unscientific to not be able to even address when something is and when something is not, like a person for instance, or like a value-making-subject for instance. I mean, if I am a values granting subject, and I am pretty sure I am doing this value-making in space and time with a body among bodies, and I am pretty sure I didn’t used to be here, isn’t there a moment when I first came to be?

Seems like there has to be an answer.

Can anyone else say that what a person is, or what a human being is, and most importantly, when either one of these pops into existence?

I assume all those reading this popped into existence sometime. And you are human type organism doing personal things. Except for Praxis. Praxis might be God. For anyone else, when would you say you started existing?

There isn’t just one aspect to being human obviously. — praxis

Great assertion. How about some aspects.

People with Klinefelter syndrome have 47 chromosomes, and there is also a condition where a person has 48 chromosomes. — Relativist

We could figure out exceptions to the rule. But we need a rule first. Is anything a human being?

(e.g. intelligent aliens would be non-human persons) — Michael

So, on earth, where do you find persons?

If you want to draw a distinction between a person and a human being, you have to show me what a person has or does, and what a human being has or does. You are distinguishing them. That's perfectly fine.

Presumably persons are where we find thinking/self-awareness/desires etc., and human beings are just a category? So "person" is the thing, and "human" is the biological category that is a non sequitur?

Secret religions — praxis

By the way. I've stated what my religion is more than a few times in the forum. It's no secret. I'm just not telling you here. Because Satan told me, not to worry, he'll take care of you.

I found a great quote:

"Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere aude! [Dare to know!] Have the courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of enlightenment."
- Immanuel Kant, 1784

So I'll ask one more time. What is your thought and supporting argument on the topic of abortion and new human life, etc?

Matter and cells - some we are made of, some we eat, What's the difference? — unenlightened

Are you asking "what are 'we'"? Are you acknowledging that we are made of cells and asking "what else are we?"

That's what I'm asking. The spirit of the conversation is an answer to that question. Pre-valuation of any cells, or eating.

Living things go through changes. They are still one living thing. That is not a premise, it's a conclusion so maybe you agree or disagree with this conclusion. But I'm operating under the assumption that there are things, objects, like a person, and these living things go through changes, and these changes don't redefine what type or individual thing they are, they extend it. A puppy is one thing; when it becomes an adult, it is still that one thing, now grown.

So let's say a person is a thinking thing. An organism in the zygote stage can't think. So if a person is a thinking thing, a zygote is not a person.

Fine, no more need to discuss it, and we can apply this to abortion however we like.

But some say, hey, but a baby doesn't look like it thinks at all. We measure brain waves and we can't see enough similarity to an adult thinker, so it is really these brain waves that are the structure and foundation of when a new human being comes into being. We might apply abortion questions to the baby then however we like.

So let's say instead, that a person is a being that can sense pain. If we leave it at that, we cannot tell the difference between a person and goat, at any stage in any life. So we need more. A person is an organism that can sense pain and has 46 chromosomes. Great, now we have a person first coming into being around 6 months or something of gestation. We can apply this to abortion however we like.

My argument is everything is arbitrary after you have a living organism with 46 chromosomes. Waiting for thought capabilities, or desiring or sentience is like waiting for laughter or pooping, or any other activity. Also, my argument is a sort of reductio ad absurdum - if a person is thinking, then to be consistent, many newborns are not persons. I think that's not an explanation of person that anyone is after.

Aside from my values being out of whack for even asking the question, I'd like to hear how actively thinking and/or sentience must be occurring before we have a person actively being. I think there are good arguments for that, but I'd like to hear some from somewhere else. I keep having to make all the substantive points for all of us to pick apart.

Whether or not some entity is a member of some biological taxonomy is of the latter kind [a game], not the former [essentialist like asserting a triangle]. — Michael

The issue doesn't have to be whether the distinctions we make refer to objects that are independent of us, or objects we invent as part of the game of conversation. I am just saying we can't keep shifting the ground on which we rest subsequent assertions, or we get nowhere.

If you say adults have heads and zygotes don't, which I say as well, we can't move on to the next point without leaving this as fixed, either fixed in an independent material world, or fixed as a choice we've made to continue the discussion.

To skip all the painful steps in between, I'm sure we agree on a lot of the facts (gamed or gleaned).

It is coherent to me to say that a person is an organism that thinks, desires, values, etc. A zygote cannot do any of those. Therefore, a zygote is not a person. That's coherent.

Further, I think it would be coherent with the above to say that an infant doesn't think, desire or value anything. It's more like a zygote. So an infant is not a person either. (You can still say that an infant has great value to many adults, and therefore, we will protect it's life because we want to, but it would not be because it is a person...but that's another conversation.)

Staying within the game we've started, you could go the biological route and show how a infant does think and desire, and is thereby a person, or not.

Or, we could start over and say that a person is a thing (organism) with 46 chromosomes and that is sentient. So now infants certainly fit the bill, and we would place the moment a new person comes into being closer to 6 months development after conception. That's also completely consistent.

Now I know that all of the above might make you cringe because of all of its essentialist-speak, but saying "If you cannot visually determine that a human has a head and that a zygote is a single cell then you are either blind or hallucinating." is using the same type of language I'm using.

you've just sealed your death — praxis

Kind of creepy. But really spot on analysis.

I don’t think it helps at all to have this conversation in religious terms.

I think some religious people think that the reason human beings are valuable is because they have a soul, and souls come from God at conception. Great. Wonderful for them. But there is nothing to argue about there, nothing to talk about, nothing to measure and no explanatory power. You just end up replacing one question “what is a human being” with another “what is a soul” and now there is less chance of answering anything.

That is exactly right. No goofing around. You nailed it. I had no idea who I was dealing with. Impressive.

Now. Do you have any of your own views? Or…where do you want to go with this? I mean I don’t want to waste your time.

There is an independent material world, and two facts about that material world are that adults have heads and that zygotes are a single cell. Given the way that objects reflect light, the way light stimulates the eyes, and the way the brain responds to the eyes, looking at an adult is going to cause a significantly different visual experience than looking at a zygote. — Michael

I agree with all of that.

But that means to me, neither of us have any choice in the matter.
“There is an independent material world”.

I’ll even stipulate that we could revisit this as a question and maybe there is no material world. But for our purposes, sharing our thoughts in a conversation, and for purposes of having a conversation about abortion, “there is an independent material world.”

So maybe we are choosing to stipulate this together, but for now, the choice is made. Everything we say further will rely on this as a fact that neither of us can choose to ignore it or we will no longer be addressing the subject.

“There is an independent material world” is itself an essentialist, objectivist position. Such a world is independent from our choices, correct? Maybe we only engage with it through choice, but it, in itself is independent, or you wouldn’t have said “independent”.

Do you want to keep going? Eventually I’d be talking about the independent differences between a fetal, a newly born and an adult human organism, and whether these differences are independent of me and my choices, or not.

Are you just a collection of particles or are you something more? This is where religion probably comes into play. — RogueAI

I’m at least a collection of particles.

That’s all I need to be to have this conversation.

The conversation, to me, is can we draw a line, a distinction between me and say, my clothing, naming me a “human being” and naming my clothes “not a human being”. So we are taking clumps of particles and distinguishing them from one another giving them names.
And the conversation, to me, is can we draw a line and say when, the clump of particles we now call a human being because of its distinction from clothing and other clumps, when did this human being first pop onto the scene?

That’s it for me. Rather we pretend no one ever thought of religion or even morality. I think this is enough material for tons of further analysis.

I don’t know what you mean by asking if we “must” see a difference. If we have working eyes then we will see a difference. — Michael

Words are always important, but they don’t need to be the focus as when making a semantical point. I think you split hairs on “will/must” without the distinction making a difference in your point.

If you cannot visually determine that a human has a head and that a zygote is a single cell then you are either blind or hallucinating. — Michael

You are saying anyone with eyes will see the difference, and if those eyes are working they must see a difference or else they are “blind or hallucinating.”

So I still see you asserting facts, visual differences in an objective world no longer subject to debate or choices, that working eyes will see, must see, are clear…