(June 19, 2014 at 6:32 pm)Arthur123 Wrote: To respond to your post, Cthulhu, I fully admit that there may indeed be a distinction between a human being and a person. (However, I am not quite convinced I could be swayed one way or the other on this point.) But in regards to my argument, you are correct, I am using human beings and the idea of human rights as my definitional and metaphysical reference in regards to this argument. I am working from the starting point of morality and believe that the law should emulate morality not vice versa. In response to your statement concerning consciousness and ethical behavior as the be all end all as far as humans go I believe we can discover I few problems with this definition.
To back up, a theory should be rejected if it has underlying issues, doesn't explain facts of reality as well as another theory, or contradicts other well accepted facts ect. By reducing humans to purely cognitive and moral function it confuses functionality with ontology. Stated similarly, what a thing can do with what it actually is. Furthermore, it raises ethical issues such as do people who are amoral lack the requirements of human rights? Or how about someone who is half conscious? One quarter conscious? Say, half the population in Earth come down with a virus and cease to have these qualities, do they loose there human rights and is not permissible to kill them? I think in these cases the answer is no.
Your ontological assessment has it's own issues. A zygote and a fully-formed human being are certainly not the same thing. One *may* become the other, but they are not equivalent, and you're ignoring the differences.
I'd wager that you don't even treat them the same. Tell me - do we treat a spontaneously miscarried zygote with the same reverence as a deceased fully formed person? Overwhelmingly we do not - because we recognize that they are not equal.
