[ookdatnog]

> I'm not making up this boundary. This is the scientific definition of an organism.

To begin with, you did not volunteer a definition for the term "organism"; you limited yourself to attempting defining "human". This was rhetorically a good move, because defining the term "organism" is significantly harder.

You keep repeating that your definition is scientific, but offer no evidence of this. I argue that no such definition exists. The wikipedia page for the term "organism" starts as follows:

> An organism is any living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Several criteria, few of which are widely accepted, have been proposed to define what constitutes an organism.

> > if we modify its genes, which you seem to imply makes it a different entity.

> I don't think I said that.

> >And if we dig a bit deeper, the criterion by which you disqualify the unfertilized egg from being considered human also disqualifies the fertilized egg. It too is an entity which can meld with other entities to form a single entity (chimerism, as we discussed), and it can even do the opposite: identical twins start as one zygote that splits at a later point in its development.

> I'm not sure either of those contradict my previous definition. The chimerism can be considered a problem that will happen. Regarding identical twins, we could argue whether "grow into an adult human" covers "grow into 2 adult humans" or not.

You forget that my statement was a reply to something you said after you stated your definition. You argued that an unfertilized egg cannot be considered a person because it is "clearly" a different entity from the fertilized egg. That does not follow from your definition, because you don't define the term "entity" anywhere.

All my counterexamples were further attempts to divine what you mean by "entity" (which is an absolutely load-bearing concept in your definition which, again, you leave undefined). If you object to the unfertilized egg being the same entity as the fertilized egg, my hypotheses about your understanding of "entity" are that either changing the genome means that it becomes a different entity (generating the deadly mutation challenge), or merging two entities makes them a distinct entity from either original (generating the chimerism example).

My reasoning was a bit loose regarding the identical twins and split-brain examples: I implicitly generalized your potential objection to mergers to an objection to changes in cardinality. I personally don't see why one would reject mergers but accept splits, but that's not an inconsistent position.

At the moment I still don't know why you believe the unfertilized egg is necessarily a different entity from the zygote. Your response to the chimerism example provides no clarification on this: I was clearly challenging your notion of entity, but you responded only with that it "can be considered a problem that can happen".

> The axiom for me is that there's no such thing as a partial person. From that axiom, the only logical conclusion I can see is that personhood begins at fertilization.

I strongly disagree with this axiom. At some point in the distant past, our ancestors were non-human (and, possibly but not necessarily at the same time, not persons). The logical conclusion from your axiom is that there was, at some point, a hard boundary where an entirely nonperson animal gave birth to a "full person" human (and that first human then presumably had to reproduce through bestiality, unless through some amazing fortune another full 100% human being was born and fertile during their fertile years).

This seems to me a significantly less reasonable reading of reality than describing this as a gradual process towards personhood/humanity, where each successive generation is "more personlike". I find this also a more moral reading of reality: to me clearly an ape or an octopus is more personlike than a cockroach, which is in turn a bit more personlike than a jellyfish, which is a tiny tiny bit more personlike than a sea sponge.

> What about child neglect laws? Those restrict the parents' autonomy.

Correct. But it does not restrict their bodily autonomy. I don't think parents can be forced to donate blood or organs to their offspring. Of course most would without a second thought, but not because it is obligated by law.

> Generally the state's laws forbid one person from taking actions that would violate the rights of another person [...] I think that is consistent to the state making it not legal for a mother to kill a fetus [...]

There's a contrived "standard thought experiment" that responds to this: suppose A kidnaps B, ties them down, and connects B's bloodstream to an entirely innocent C with kidney failure, so that B's kidneys process C's blood. Disconnecting B from C will result in the death of C (assume there is no way around this). In this case the status quo is that B is keeping C alive, and it requires active intervention to change this situation. Does B now have a moral duty to remain physically connected to C at all times? Does B "kill" C if they disconnect the bloodstreams?

If you believe that it is, your opinion is consistent. If it's not, then you must at least permit abortion in the case of rape, even if the fetus is a person.

[Thorrez]

> Such a definition raises more problems than it solves,

That's a good point. However, none of the examples of situations where the definition is debatable apply to humans. The page lists viruses, colonial organisms, zooids, and collaboration organisms. I think for humans (which I think is the most widely studied organism), scientists can clearly define what is an organism and what isn't.

I think if you were to survey biologists, the vast majority (95%+) would agree with me on all the cases ("is this specific thing a human organism") you listed.

>"entity" (which is an absolutely load-bearing concept in your definition which, again, you leave undefined)

Ok. Let's define it as "a cell or group of cells that are joined together and acting together".

>You argued that an unfertilized egg cannot be considered a person because it is "clearly" a different entity from the fertilized egg.

I said "I think there's a clear biological difference between an entity receiving nutrition, and 2 entities, each with half of a set of DNA, coming together to make a single entity with a full set of DNA."

My point was that there's a clear difference between receiving nutrition and 2 entities with half a set of DNA coming together. My point wasn't that the unfertilized egg and fertilized egg are clearly different entities (as you've pointed out, that's not exactly clear, and depends on the definition entity).

My definition doesn't hinge on the unfertilized egg and fertilized egg being different entities. An unfertilized egg won't typically grow into an adult human. A fertilized egg will typically grow into an adult human.

>At some point in the distant past, our ancestors were non-human (and, possibly but not necessarily at the same time, not persons). The logical conclusion from your axiom is that there was, at some point, a hard boundary where an entirely nonperson animal gave birth to a "full person" human (and that first human then presumably had to reproduce through bestiality, unless through some amazing fortune another full 100% human being was born and fertile during their fertile years).

That's a good point. One thing though is that our actions today can't impact people in the past. So from an ethics point of view, we don't need to worry about the past, only the present and future. And as you say, we don't 100% know what happened in the past.

With the partial people view, someone might conclude today a person with a certain genetic disorder is similar to an ape, and thus a partial person, and thus doesn't need rights. By saying "no partial people today", we avoid that problem.

>If you believe that it is, your opinion is consistent. If it's not, then you must at least permit abortion in the case of rape, even if the fetus is a person.

I would say the way to resolve this is by defining what is the standard care that each person deserves.

If someone needs an exotic treatment that costs $1B/day to survive each day, and a hospital has the treatment in stock, is the hospital obligated to provide it to someone who can't pay? I would say no. It's within the hospital's rights to not give the person the treatment, or cease treatment if already provided in previous days.

However, is it within the hospital's rights to cease providing the person food and water against the person's will? (Let's avoid the euthanasia discussion and say the person is fully responsive but is quadriplegic.) I would say no. Food and water are standard care, and cannot be denied.

Food and water are standard care. The $1B treatment isn't.

2 people being attached permanently for the purpose of blood processing of a failed kidney isn't standard care.

A mother's womb is standard care for a fetus.

(Another thing to consider is what direct action is taken. In a D&E abortion, the fetus is cut into pieces with a scissors, which is the cause of death. So in the specific case of a D&E abortion, there's a second clear difference from the blood treatment case, in that it's a direct physical attack on the fetus that kills the fetus. E.g. in the kidney failure case, would it be ok to cut the person into pieces with a chainsaw? No, even if the person already is going to die of kidney failure. Other types of abortion are not as direct though, so this argument can't be as clearly used to condemn all types of abortion.)

[ookdatnog]

I'll re-order a bit based on perceived importance.

> That's a good point. One thing though is that our actions today can't impact people in the past. So from an ethics point of view, we don't need to worry about the past, only the present and future. And as you say, we don't 100% know what happened in the past.

> With the partial people view, someone might conclude today a person with a certain genetic disorder is similar to an ape, and thus a partial person, and thus doesn't need rights. By saying "no partial people today", we avoid that problem.

Here it's important to remember exactly what positions we are defending. The viewpoint you have been defending is not merely that we should, for ethical reasons, consider the zygote to be a person. You are defending a much stronger claim, which is that denying that the zygote is a person goes against our current scientific understanding.

To be absolutely clear: I don't think that your belief that the zygote is a person is unscientific or demonstrably wrong (although I believe there are more sensible candidates for boundaries). What's more is that I understand the need for a "legal fiction" around personhood: a legal definition that is deliberately too broad, stemming from a hopefully broadly shared sense that we should try very hard to avoid false negatives.

However, I am very certain that this conviction is not a scientific necessity. It's specifically this part of your claim I am addressing with the "nonhuman ancestors" example. My claim is that science simply does not provide us with a clean boundary between persons and non-persons. Whatever boundary we are going to come up with for legal and moral reasons is going to be somewhat arbitrary, probably based on drawing the boundary a bit too broad.

You claim that your belief that the zygote is a person follows logically from the axiom that personhood is always non-partial. I agree with this as a legal fiction. But from a philosophical or scientific point of view, this is simply disprovable. If you accept that my nonhuman ancestors example disproves your axiom of non-partiality of personhood in the domain of philosphy/science (not in the domain of law), then:

- you can continue to believe that we should consider the zygote as a full person

- but, your argument that it is logically or scientifically necessary to consider the zygote as a person collapses.

> 2 people being attached permanently for the purpose of blood processing of a failed kidney isn't standard care.

I feel like your entire argument here rests on the idea that the attachment is permanent, making your sacrifice much greater than that of a pregnant woman. If we contrive a reason why, for example, you would only need to be attached for a month or week or so, this argument evaporates. If you need to provide your kidneys for the duration of one week, then your sacrifice is clearly much less than that of a pregnant woman. On what basis can the state then force a pregnant woman to stay pregnant for nine months, but not force you to remain a living dialysis machine for a week?

> My definition doesn't hinge on the unfertilized egg and fertilized egg being different entities. An unfertilized egg won't typically grow into an adult human. A fertilized egg will typically grow into an adult human.

Retracing this thread in the conversation, I'm getting confused about what your exact position here is. This is what I said earlier:

> Me: But if an unfertilized egg dies due to not being fertilized, I'm sure you would argue that "not being fertilized" doesn't count as a problem; or alternatively, that the fertilized egg is a different entity from the unfertilized egg. But none of this follows naturally from the definition, it requires our notions of "problem" and "entity" to be perfectly aligned to begin with. And you will pick your understanding of "problem" and "entity" based on wanting to prove that the unfertilized egg isn't a human but the starving child is.

So you must either claim that it's a different entity, or that not being fertilized doesn't count as a "problem". The thread continues:

> You: I think there's a clear biological difference between an entity receiving nutrition, and 2 entities, each with half of a set of DNA, coming together to make a single entity with a full set of DNA.

> Me: The difference is "clear" to you because you are reasoning backwards from a desired conclusion. You want to claim that the zygote is a person and the unfertilized egg is not, so of course the merger of DNA is the "clear" boundary between entities to you.

> You: I'm not making up this boundary. This is the scientific definition of an organism.

Because of this quote, I was convinced that out of the "problem" and "entity" objections, you picked the "entity" one; that is, you respond to my challenge that the unfertilized egg can be considered a human being in your definition by stating that it is a different entity from the unfertilized egg, not that "not being fertilized" doesn't count as a problem.

But then in your most recent post you state "My point wasn't that the unfertilized egg and fertilized egg are clearly different entities". Then what was the point you were making by bringing up the definition of an organism?