(August 30, 2013 at 9:39 am)missluckie26 Wrote: C'mon Esqui, debate this.. for me?
Come on MissLuckie, I know that you see the absurdity in making personhood dependent upon someone else’s opinion. Something is either a person or it is not, regardless of what we may think.
(August 30, 2013 at 1:52 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Well, that's a mighty fine strawman, but since you're drawing it from a single line on my part, I'd say you're probably inaccurate in your depiction of my position.
You seemed to claim that a fetus is not a person simply because you believe it is not a person; or is there actually a legitimate reason why a fetus is not a person? If there is, then I am interested in hearing it.
Quote:I'll tear into your definition below in a second,
It’s not my definition, it’s the dictionary’s. That’s the difference between you and me; I do not base any of this upon my own arbitrary opinion.
Quote: but I'd add that a human being is defined by a number of biological traits in the first place, not least of them being an ability to survive outside of the womb.
That is not part of the definition of being a human being; that’s your own arbitrary and self-serving qualifier that you’ve added to the definition of being a human (it’s no different than saying you must be white to be human, or you must have a penis to be human). A human is simply any organism possessing a human genome.
Quote: Humans are defined as apart from other animals with regards to their physical form, and a fetus lacks a number of those traits, inside and out, for quite a lengthy period in its gestation, like, say, a fully developed brain, and organs, and sensory capabilities... you know, all those specific things that humans have that separate us from other animals and set us in a classification of our own? How many of them are you willing to take away and still define something as human?
Again, that is not how we define humanity. Humanity is defined by our genetics, not our morphology. Given your reasoning, a person born without legs would not be a human because they didn’t look like the rest of us; or an eight year old boy would not be a human because he didn’t possess fully developed sex organs. It’s this exact same mentality that leads to people believing those who merely look different than they do are not humans. Whenever we find remains we always test their DNA in order to determine if they are human remains or not.
Quote: Human beings are people, but not everything that comes from a human is itself a human.
Sure, but every entity that possesses its own human DNA is a human being; trying to argue against that leads to absurdities that neither you nor I will accept.
Quote:
Is a dead body a person? Because that's all you're really arguing, that it's the flesh that ascribes personhood, and given that a fetus isn't in any way human looking as it develops, this is hardly the best definition you should be using.
It’s not the flesh, it’s the DNA. That’s the dictionary’s definition, and the only reason you do not like it is because it proves abortion is murder.
It’s troubling that you insist on using the same reasoning white supremacists use…
“Well he doesn’t look like the rest of us, so therefore he must not be a person and we’re therefore justified in killing him!”
“Well the fetus doesn’t look like the rest of us, so therefore it must not be a person and we’re therefore justified in killing it!”
Whenever your argument can be used to deduce conclusions that you will not accept, it’s an indicator that you need to relinquish that argument.
