Michael

I'm mostly addressing NOS4A2's reasoning. He argues that because a zygote/embryo/foetus is a living organism with a human genetic makeup then it is hu...

It requires more than that. Those born with anencephaly, if still alive when born, don't last very long. As far as I can tell from reading that, they ...

Also I'm not sure if it's coincidental. I suspect that a sufficient degree of consciousness is required for a human life to be viable, and as the brai...

Well I'm not talking about the law? I'm only saying that something being a living organism with human DNA is insufficient grounds to conclude that it ...

I was getting my information from the emergence of consciousness: Science and ethics:

I'm just reading what the neuroscientists have written, e.g. here: So no thalamocortical interactions, no consciousness.

No, because it needs to be a sufficiently complex brain functioning in the appropriate manner, hence why the brain dead and those with anencephaly are...

The human body contains 37.2 trillion cells. I guess that means that I am in fact 37.2 trillion conscious individuals.

The scientific evidence supports the claim that consciousness requires a brain-like structure; it does not support the claim that grass is conscious. ...

I wouldn’t. I’d dismiss it as nonsense, much like the theory that consciousness is some immaterial magic that arbitrarily attaches itself to random cl...

Yes. Consciousness requires a sufficiently complex and functioning brain (and plausibly some other brain-like structure). A zygote is just a small col...

We know that adults are conscious and zygotes aren’t. We know that (in humans) a functioning brain is required. We have reason to believe that certain...

Yes, which is why it would be wrong to kill someone who’s asleep or unconscious or with locked in syndrome but not wrong to take someone who’s brain d...

I'd say it's with the development of thalamocortical connectivity, which occurs ~24 weeks after conception.

And I have developed morally relevant faculties that a zygote lacks. The actual possession of intelligence is an important biological difference. Bein...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is no single point, much like with the Sorites paradox. It's acceptable when it's a zygote or blastocyst or e...

That doesn’t explain or justify your assertion that it is wrong to kill anything with our genetic makeup. My own take is that our genetic makeup is ne...

That’s what I meant by “having human DNA”. So why does anything with our genetic makeup deserve to live?

All of them. You claimed, with examples, that some things can have human DNA but not be human. So I want to know what it is that makes something with ...

Here’s an interesting paper: Could a zygote be a human being?

So what distinguishes a human organism with human DNA and a non-human organism with human DNA, and why is this distinction the measure of whether or n...

And to be a member of the species homo sapiens is to have the appropriate ("human") DNA? So when you say that it is wrong to kill a foetus because it ...

Yes. As related to my reply to Hanover above, what a human is depends on how we use the word "human", and how we use the word "human" is a contingent ...

Whether or not something "satisfies what a person is" depends on what the word "person" means which depends on how we use it. How we use the word "per...

That someone doesn't deserve to die isn't that they deserve to live. Embryos and foetuses don't deserve anything. You equivocate. The premise "it is w...

My own take is that for the most part essentialism is false. There's no such thing as the essence of personhood; there's just the social fact that we ...

Yes, something like this is argued in Semantic Direct Realism that I often quote. There's phenomenological direct realism, or naive realism, that indi...

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. It is not a contradiction to say that the only thing we know about the magnetic field is how it aff...

What are these "same reasons"? Because I would say that it is wrong to kill other humans because it is wrong to kill humans with thoughts and feelings...

The biggest and most relevant difference is that a baby is no longer being carried in the womb of its mother, and so the mother's bodily rights are no...

It was an embryo, but now isn't. There is a very real biological difference between a baby and an embryo. This very real biological difference has mor...

And if I ask you to show me what makes killing a human embryo wrong? There is a very real biological difference between an embryo and a baby. They mig...

I think it's important to avoid any equivocation. This seems to be the pro-life argument: a) "X is a human" means "X has human DNA" b) It is never acc...

Echarmion asked "is this supposed to mean that there's no evidence for personhood?" You responded with "I understand, and have no problem with either ...

You severely overestimate my morning energy. Getting out of bed, walking to the fridge to get a bottle of Huel, and getting back into bed is too much ...

The example of the Presidents explains what I mean in simple terms. You conflate "A is required for B" and "A is necessary". The former does not entai...

That's not a given.

One can believe in some necessary thing without believing that this thing is God. Theism does not have exclusive ownership of necessity. Perhaps the n...

You should read the next part: i.e. the only thing we know about distal objects is how they affect our senses.

"B and if not A then not B" does not entail "necessarily A". B ? (¬A ? ¬B) ? ?A As an example, a 46th President of the United States requires a 1st Pr...

Regarding Kant's ding an sich, I think this quote provides a simple account of it: As an analogy to this that the direct realist can accept; we do not...

Gilbert Ryle's category mistake from The Concept of Mind.

A relevant passage from here:

So you claim that killing foetuses is wrong but don't need to point to some measurable property of being wrong because "wrong" is an adjective, and ot...

That doesn't really address the question. According to your own account of rights there's nothing more to rights than someone having said something li...

I mean you said this: So forgive me for being confused. Are you now suggesting that it can be wrong to kill a foetus and that a foetus deserves the ch...

I was just explaining what Echarmion was saying. I understood you as misinterpreting him as saying that life begins after conception. Maybe I misunder...

My claim is that the scientific evidence shows that naive realism is wrong, and I support this claim by referring to experts in the field, such as Ein...

I'm not. A sperm cell is a single-celled organism. It's alive.

I believe the point he was making is that sperm cells are alive, and so that life began before conception.