Jerry Smith

bd:
I am going to try to keep this as brief as possible.

I will do the same for you.

If you are satisfied by Scrutinizers reply to me, I will be satisfied by my replies to Scrutinizer, and simply refer you to them.

I have read your reply to him. It seems that the non-arbitrary and universal moral principle of "a little bit of common sense" is the one that comes into play. Will you object if I make an appeal of that nature where it concerns the proposition that a zygote is qualitatively the same as any other healthy human individual and due equal rights?

The fact is that you have found an example where a Person and an individual exist that are both on the extreme border of our working definition of person. One falls inside, one outside. Unless someone can give us a really good reason to treat the one outside our definition as though he were inside it, we need not concern ourselves further with him. We should be concerned with the one inside merely because he does meet our definition of person, and it would be arbitrary and inconsistent to exclude him, not because he is a fundamentally different individual than the outside case. It does no person harm to so consider him, so we do not have to revise our definition to make sure he is excluded.

The confusion is that you are having problems seeing who is guilty of tautology. You seek to defend both "All Persons are due rights," and "Persons are defined as those individuals which are due rights." By mathematical substitution, you could economize by saying "All individuals which are due rights are due rights."

No, its the other way around. If you attempt to find a moral principle to both define personhood, and to show that persons are due rights, then you end with the circular definition you stated "they are due rights because they are persons, and they are persons because they are due rights."

In order to avoid circular reasoning, you must either be willing to throw out the old saw about all persons being due rights and start from scratch building moral principles that grant rights (hoping to end up with one that includes all persons), or you must define person on some basis other than a criterion that supports rights.

1) Why some SINGLE moral principle? Is a person that simple, that she boils down to the presence or absence of some single quality that relates to some single moral principle?
2) The moral principles for recognizing persons are well-recognized, but not well-defined. We may not know why we recognize persons as such, but we know that we do.
3) We cannot demand more. Personhood is not objective. There is no absolute quality of an individual that makes it a person. Personhood is and can only be what our biological and cultural values say it is. I understand your objection that this allows such things as slavery and discrimination in times when the culture denies personhood to some groups who you and I consider persons. The solution is not to create some artificial (but consistent) definition of personhood and offer it to the society whose ideas we object to. The solution has to be to convince them to change their culture, either by force or by reasoning. The reasoning must be based on moral principles, but it will never be effective if it is based on moral principles that have no grounding in their experience of personhood. Future cognition has no grounding in our culture's experience of personhood.

No, we are arguing over the definition of a "person". Your definition seems to hinge on the idea that it is someone entitled to civil rights. Mine does not. The fact that Persons are entitled to civil rights does not enter into my attempt to define person.

Listen: I am prosecuting a "grand theft auto" case, and the defendant pleads that what was stolen was a bicycle. When trying to convince the jury that the stolen item was an automobile, it makes no sense to say "for the purpose of this discussion, we are defining 'automobile' as anything the theft of which is 'grand theft auto'".

The same difference as saying that 4 wheels and an engine are important to automobile-hood and saying that they are important to "grand theft auto".

Why do you think that it is obvious? I don't find it so.

So, the Declaration's statement that "all men" are created equal would inform us "correctly" of what the "obvious" definition of Person was in the Constitution? I hope not.

Ok, it is perfectly clear, then, that "all men" include zygotes. The founding fathers CLEARLY thought that a zygote in a morally equivalent entity to the woman who's belly it grows in. Why? Because you want it to be?

It may be that no principled objection exists, except our own subjective moral perspective. If you (honestly) believed that blacks did not have souls and therefore were not people and therefore not entitled to equal rights, there would be little I could do to convince you. I could suggest that cognition is more important than having a soul. I could try to convince you that your concept of a soul is equivalent to my concept of cognition and show that blacks did have that.

I can take a "principled" argument only so far: I can demonstrate that blacks have many traits in common with those individuals that you consider persons. As long as those traits apply to your idea of what a person is, I have a chance at making progress. If I attempt to make an authoritative definition that relies on traits that are irrelevant to you, then I have no further hope. I can argue cognition on blacks being persons, even though they, like Persons, go to sleep sometimes. If I start arguing irrelevancies like potential future cognition, I lose: you may borrow my rigid "moral principles" and bury me, since I have future death.

Maybe so. If that is the case we are all probably in trouble. The simple fact is that Personhood is intimately tied to people's intuitions and subconscious reactions. The fact may be regrettable, but it is unalterably there.

If we unleash equal rights and equal protection from Personhood, though, we are out of the frying pan and into the fire.

What society is going to agree to be bound to granting equal rights on the basis of something as meaningless as future cognition?

So, an autistic individual would be a non-person and we are justified in killing her without due process of law?

Can you support this assertion? Remember, please, that learning human social behavior is an example of the "human kind" of cognition. My experience is that infants begin doing this from day one. Doubtless a few days or weeks before they were born, the necessary structures were in place of them to do so.

What is the alternative? We have either a subjective moral designation open to the abuses of racists and bigots, or we have an objective one based on irrelevancies such as "future moral cognition" and flies in the face of our own held moral values.

The simple fact is that Personhood is not reducible to a simple formula. It is a product of our own perceptions. We agree that people should have equal rights (although I disagree that those rights stem from some universal moral principle: I believe that the principle of equal rights for people must be taken prima facie) We merely disagree on what is a person. I don't think any fancy "moral principle" will convince me that a zygote is a person any more my "moral principles" could convince you that a 'stereo is a lampshade.' (to paraphrase Scrutinizer)

Until next time,
Jerry

[ April 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Scrutinizer

Jerry Smith,

I italicised part of that quote to indicate where I think you're making a logical error. An individual or thing will not "naturally and foreseeably" have certain qualities in the future unless the potential is innate; in the case of separate sperm and ova, they will not "naturally and foreseeably" become a person unless the two individual things join to make a completely different, new individual.

The introduction of a time bias into the equation seems to be a curious moral principle. That becomes clearer in the case of the comatose individual who is not currently manifesting self-consciousness or personhood or cognition or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps you can illustrate the significance of the fact that an individual in a coma was a person in the past or the significance of the fact that an individual in a coma already has the structures necessary for cognition, but I haven't seen a good explanation of the significance of those facts so far.

That's what leads me to think that bd-from-kg's criterion for personhood is a good one. It is ridiculous to say that you've precluded an individual from achieving self-consciousness when a sperm and ovum haven't even joined to create a zygote! Which individual have you precluded? Should we have concern for a theoretical entity? And if so, surely we shouldn't be wasting our time typing at computers when we could be out conceiving more and more children! Any wasted time means that poor theoretical entities are not reaching their potential to become mature persons!

So, I think we can both agree that extending the potential argument to beyond the formation of an individual is a ridiculous move. But does the potential argument have any merit when an individual entity exists? I think it does, because we clearly value the potential of someone who has temporarily lost cognitive abilities, and I, like bd-from-kg, see no moral significance in the fact that in one case someone is temporarily bereft of a characteristic whereas in the other case that characteristic is being formed for the first time.

But as bd-from-kg has pointed out, what difference is there between a car that possesses an engine that has been so badly damaged that it won't function without heavy work input to fix it, and a car that's engine is currently being formed? The mere possession of a worthless structure seems quite morally insignificant to me.

That quote is a very curious one indeed. If arbitrary inclusion is acceptable, what would be wrong if I legislated for foetuses to be arbitrarily included under the definition of a person? Or, let's say I was a vegetarian and had no logical justification for my stance against meat eating. Could I just arbitrarily include animals under my definition of personhood even if there is no logical reason for doing so?

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

Jerry Smith

to all of the participants in this thread, and especially to bd:

After posting last night, I ran across the debate between Jen Roth & Richard Carrier on abortion, that covered the topic. I had an eerie feeling while reading <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/debates/secularist/abortion/index.shtml" target="_blank">their debate</a>, that I was hearing echos from our own, over and over. It was uncanny to see how Roth's and Carrier's expressed views mirrored bd's and mine. I am not sure that I will be able to carry out the remainder of this discussion without unconsciously plagiarizing Mr. Carrier. My apologies in advance to bd-from-kg and to Mr. Carrier if this should be the case.

Mr. Carrier & Ms. Roth seem to have left the debate at the point where we are now. I hope it will be possible for us to continue on past this point and arrive at conclusions we can agree on.

I should also offer my apologies because I may have to slow down considerably in posting. I have already overextended myself here and in my discussion with luvluv.

[ April 14, 2002: Message edited by: Jerry Smith ]</p>

Jerry Smith

Scrutinizer,
In the case of a sperm and ova, they will not "naturally and foreseeably" become a person. In the case of a pile of rubber, steel, plastic and blueprints on the racks of a working automobile factory, they will become an automobile, naturally and foreseeably, even though their potential is not an innate to them.

We cannot define what a thing is only in relation to what it will "naturally and foreseeably" do in the future. We must define what a thing is in relation to what its properties are at present. The only ways the innateness of future potential are relevant at all are these:

1) Future potential sometimes exists innately
2) Innate future potential is a quality held at present (bd's point).

The problem with (2) is, whether a thing's future potential is innate or not is virtually irrelevant to the definition of what a thing is. It does satisfy the criterion of being a "present quality", but it is not an important one. An acorn presently has the innate future potential to become a tree, but we do not call it a tree. We cannot sit under its shade. We can not cut it down for lumber. We can not paint a landscape with the acorn standing majestically over a placid lake. We cannot carve our initials into its trunk.
We value a thing because of its present qualities. Even in cases where innate future potential is important to us, it is a different kind of value than the realized potential.

The time bias comes from the nature of the inquiry we are making. We are asking what a thing is now, and what it is proper to do with the thing now.

Upon reflection, I think this would be a poor approach for me. I have tinkered with both of those ideas, (and even given a definition based on the structures necessary for cognition), but I think the main point of what I was trying to express by doing so was this:

A person in a coma is engaged in doing the thing that is fundamental to personhood. She is maintaining a unique, high level, cognitive personality. If she was not busy being a person while in the coma, then recovering would bring her to a state where a new person would have to be formed... starting from the mind of a late term fetus and developing an entirely new set of traits and personal memories.

I was asleep 10 minutes ago. The fact that I was the same person when I woke up as when I went to sleep implies that I was had that personality, or was that person (if you will), even while I was asleep.

It is clear that we do value a peron who has temporarily lost cognitive expression. It is not clear to me that the driving reason for this lies in their innate future potential. It may be that we are convinced that their core cognitive processes are operating to maintain their personality, even though they are not currently able to reason, make moral choices, or express their personality.

The cerebral cortex is not worthless when it is capable of carrying out core personal activities - even while a person is asleep and it is merely operating for maintenance. It is extremely rare that a person's body remains alive and the cerebral cortex is completely broken, and perfoming no valuable task. A working definition of personhood based on the possession of a cerebral cortex may give us trouble in the rare case that a living person has a non-functional one.

I have come to agree that we should do what is possible to find a way to account for this. Perhaps I have been mistaken to resort to a purely structural definition, even as a working representative of our values based on what I previously thought was a one-to-one correspondence.

In simple terms, the car where the engine is being built from scratch only vaguely resembles a car, but a car that with a badly broken engine is obviously a car to us. To relate the analogy of the car to a working definition of personhood: a car with a broken engine still has all of the qualities of a car, even when its properties are only maintained as "mechanical memory". The same engine is there, attached in the same way to the transmission, and when repaired, the same car will exist as existed before. The car never went away, it merely became passive until the mechanic got to it.

You are correct. Arbitrary inclusion carries the risk of arbitrarily impinging upon the rights of individuals who are persons based on non-arbitrary qualities. I did not recognize this when I made my statement and you are right to correct me.
I do not, however, feel it is necessary to include an embryo or a zygote on the same moral grounds upon which we include newborn babies and even late term fetuses. I think that I was right to argue that babies do exhibit human cognitive function (because they have a working cerebral cortex), even though they cannot reason or make moral choices as an adult can. They are engaged from (even before?) birth in human cognitive behavior, such as social learning and the learning of personality traits.

Please see my next post, addressed to the group...

Jerry Smith

To the group:

I have not given bd-from-kg a chance to respond to my last post addressed to him, and for that I apologize. I also apologize for posting so many consecutive or near consecutive posts without waiting for responses. I would like to submit to the group and to bd-from-kg an idea that I just woke up with this morning and get your reactions to it:

What we are really doing here is arguing between two kinds of ideas of what a Person to whom rights are due is:

One is a very simple definition based on one measureable criterion that can be simply and easily expressed and examined. To paraphrase, we define as a Person, 'that which has the ability to reason and make moral choices'. It is a necessarily simplistic notion, based on the single, universal idea that 'reason and moral agency' are valuable, and that rights must be extended based on a universal moral principle from value. However, it makes no sense to apply
this criterion to an individual's present identity, and it must apply to its future potential, blindly treating any individuals with future potential for the important traits as moral equivalents.

The other definition under discussion is more robust. It seeks to better and more completely reflect our universal ideas of what makes a person. It rejects the notion that individuals with similar future potential must be given equal status without regard to their (vastly different) present qualities. This it can only accomplish at the cost of simplicity and clarity. If this is its only fault, then we are obligated to make every effort to clarify and de-mystify the all of the qualities that universally mean "person" to us and our values.

I feel that it would be a crime to reduce our criteria for personhood to a single one that is so simple it no longer even reflects many of the important features of our concept of person. The single simple criterion that does not recognize personhood of the severely autistic or one that must be placed on the Procrustean Bed of innate future potential in order to accomodate infants or sleeping individuals.

dk

I'll take Jerry's last post as an opportunity to submit morality is objective knowledge revealed by experience, aesthetics and reason. Morality makes reason accessible to people allowing trespasses and grievances to be resolved justly to restore and protect the good order of the community. To deny morality enslaves reason to personal appetites, passions and goals. Personhood is a legal term that assigns to the individual specific liberties, freedoms, obligations and rights under the "Rule of Law". Let me make my point by responding to an earlier post.
dk: I think you’ve already wandered off into lala land. You presume personhood can be deduced from the essence of “physiological structures” but fail to distinguish the difference between higher structures evident in rational creatures and lower species. Only one known species, Homo sapiens, uniquely demonstrate a capacity for intelligent cognition, though for practical purposes the point is mute because there is no empirical definition of intelligent cognition. Since human beings are objectively the only known intelligent species, the biological world lacks a subject for comparative analysis. That brings us to computers and Strong AI. Studies into Strong AI continue to disappoint. Evolution of intelligent creatures makes no comment on the unmoved mover, except to speculate that a random upstream process can be sustained across billions of years to make randomly ?design? an intelligent being. Strong AI presumes computers can generate random numbers, but that’s a hotly debated topic. To utterly destroy the premise I simply need to ask the question, “How do you know?”. The only empirical answer to the question is “I don’t know, and neither does anyone else”. Let’s be straight then, there is no empirical definition of consciousness, much less empirical evidence to categorize “physiological structures”. Once more…
dk: An acorn seed bares no resemblance to an acorn tree, yet the actualized potential of an acorn seed is an acorn tree. Whether this is by design or accident it’s illogical to ignore the empirical evidence.
dk: I agree Jerry that probability offers only inferential comment, i.e. strictly limited to describing the outcome of extrinsic phenomena, hence cognition is unsuited to empirically categorization. Studies on human behavior fail miserably to predict a specific short term or general long term future because they are blind to the infinite plausible outcomes made possible by human creativity. Why? Because human creativity is intrinsic, hence unsuited to statistical analysis.
It’s undeniable that the specific acorn seed that grows into an acorn tree describes the life cycle of a single tree. This is both an intuitive and empirical fact.
dk: Your approach reduces mental states to a finite state automaton incapable of creative potential. There is simply no evidence that a machine is capable of Strong AI or creative potential. I would argue the physical world empirically reduces to time, mass and length ( from which all other units of measure are derived ). Your approach doesn’t address the key issue with units of feet, moles, work or energy, but sidesteps substance with conjecture. I’m tired of shrinks misrepresenting clinical diagnosis as a biological and chemical imbalance. Shrinks don’t diagnose behavior disorders by measuring chemicals in the brain, most shrinks can’t recognize organic matter unless it bits them in the ass. It’s a narcissistic charade promulgated to impress the masses with pseudo scientific double talk. Nobody can measure chemicals by doing a clinical diagnosis of behavior, what they measure is behavior then treat it as best they know how. If the patient feels better, and the neurotic symptoms are masked then the patient was successfully treated. This is simple trial and error.
One need only trend (last 50 years) the rate of suicide, drug addiction, depression and other mental disorders in young people to establish a baseline. The mental health of people determine the reliability of psychology, not the bs of shrinks. Studies into the human mind are political, social and philosophical, not empirical. I would equate modern Psychology to a synthesis of alchemy and phrenology, and I’m being generous.
dk: Now you lost me Jerry, Singer is a utilitarian type trying to gird post modern liberalism in reality. His philosophy reduces to a conundrum of environmental, social and political theories that defy logic and reason to advance post modern liberal policies. Utilitarianism construct good as “what brings happiness to the most people” (or in Singers case the most creatures). I would argue that Singer fails miserably precisely because of his utilitarian roots. After all what is the happiness of a few fish, mollusks, turtles, etc... compared with the uncountable trillions of creatures that live happily on the sewage of a polluted river. Neuron for neuron the density, diversity and quantity of life in a sewage soaked river is the greater good, society needs to throw ever increasing loads of raw sewage in streams and rivers, not cleaning them up. Singer’s problems start with aesthetics and devolve into a conundrum that can’t distinguish a fart from art.
dk: People possess a creative potential that is lacking in machinery and lower life forms. I think you’re mistaking humanist doctrine for self evident premises. The structural definition is flawed.
1) A human embryo is extrinsically different but intrinsically the same baby, child, adult. If the embryo, baby, child or adult is destroyed then the person dies. A pile of plastic and rubber is intrinsically and extrinsically a pile of plastic and rubber, nothing more or less. The structural definition is flawed.
2) A comma can injure a person extrinsically and/or intrinsically; or the person in a comma may wake up healthy. A car with a faulty ignition is unreliable until somebody repairs it. The structural definition is flawed.
3) A horse and buggy are two distinct things, a person is one indivisible human being.
4) I assume you mean a car parked, with the motor left idling. A parked car doesn’t dream, heal, grow, rest, etc… a parked car doesn’t do much of anything except burn fuel, deteriorate and get older.
- I submit that Morality reasonably interprets human conduct as “good” and “bad” to reliably reconcile human actions with intentions to justify consequences. Without morality, progress and civilization degenerate into a riddle of plausible conspiracy theories, skeptical explanations and mass paranoia. As people abandon moral standards it becomes impossible to reasonably reconcile conduct and actions with consequences. Over time behavior becomes irrational because deprived of reason people behave like animals (unreasonably). For example when a poor black urban kid blows away dozens of bystanders in a gang war, it’s understandable, because everybody understands poverty and racism cause violence. When two upper middle class teenagers from Columbine committed mass murder suicide the nation put metal detectors, security cameras, armed guards and drug sniffing dogs into most public schools. Why? Because what Klebold and Harris did defied any and all reasonable explanation. Without access to reason people view their society, government, schools, police, neighbors, friends, spouses, children, and parents as ominous entities (enemies). Without moral standards people to degenerate into a depressed fractured state where they are paralyzed by apathy, and/or irrational compulsions symptomatic of social alienation and estrangement. Why? Because absent reason people behave like animals and an immoral society denies people access to reason and the discretion and liberty thereof. Without an appeal to reason a society has no recourse but to assert “might makes right” or disintegrate.

[ April 14, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

Jerry Smith

I'm not sure what your angle is, or what axe you are here to grind. My approach simply recognizes that human cognitive events depend on the existence of the physical structures that create them. This is pretty much self-evident. If you disagree, then the likely case is that you feel there is a supernatural component. This began as a discussion about secular views on abortion. Although I did not make that premise clear when I started the new thread to deal with the issue of person-hood, I hope to continue it as such. I am not really interested in debating the theology of the issue.

I agree that every oak tree started as an acorn (that of course was not a tree). How is this relevant?

What Singer said is between you and BD. I specifically refused to rebut Singer when I have not read him. BD says his arguments are similar. That may be the case. Show me how what I said does not effectively rebut BD.

[quote]A human embryo is extrinsically different but intrinsically the same baby, child, adult. If the embryo, baby, child or adult is destroyed then the person dies.

If an embryo is destroyed, exactly what person dies? The person that the embryo would have grown into? How can a person who has yet to come into existence die?

The question I am answering has nothing to do with the intrinsic sameness of an embryo and the person it grows into. A pile of plastic and rubber in a working automobile factory is going to become an automobile naturally (due to the nature of auto factories and raw materials) and foreseeably, just as much as an embryo will naturally and foreseeably become a person. "Innateness", or your word "intrinsicness" is irrelevant, as I discussed before.

The only difference is that the repairs that come to a person in a coma are induced by his own biology rather than by an outside mechanic. Again "innateness" or "intrinsicness", which, again, is irrelevant.

Is this relevant?

[quote]I assume you mean a car parked, with the motor left idling. A parked car doesn’t dream, heal, grow, rest, etc… a parked car doesn’t do much of anything except burn fuel, deteriorate and get older. [quote]

It doesn't do anything, but it is still a car. I don't mean with the engine running. I mean a parked car. It doesn't do anything, but it is still a car.

DK, I'm not sure whether you are on topic here or not. Do you have a position on Personhood? If so, I hope you will read each post and see what has already been discussed. It would be better not to resurrect old quotations out of their meaningful context and make rebuttals to them that are in essence irrelevant to the argument.

It seems you aren't fond of psychiatrists. That would be a topic for another thread.

Scrutinizer

Jerry Smith,

Yes, they will become an automobile, but only if the workers in the factory continue with the necessary output to join all the pieces together to form the car. This is similar to a situation where one could say a sperm and ovum will naturally and foreseeably become a person if the "work input" of the man and woman continues at the right time and without a contraceptive.

But I think there is a very relevant difference between the potential of a sperm and ovum to produce a person and the innate potential of an embryo to become a person. Let's ask ourselves who has been killed if two people use a contraceptive to prevent pregnancy. Surely it is completely arbitrary to pick from among millions of sperm and ova to select a victim of their cruel deed! In the case of contraceptives, you are stopping a process that hasn't even been started.

In the case of an embryo, however, there is a clear and obvious individual who is being killed if you have an abortion. The crucial question then becomes whether this individual has the right not to be killed. The innateness of the embryo's potential means that:
1) The developmental process of a distinct entity has begun
2) There is a distinct individual who is killed if you have an abortion
Those two factors, I think, significantly distinguish using a contraception and aborting an embryo/fetus.

But does an individual embryo deserve not to be killed? And so I move on...

Of course, and the same applies to the good ol' comatose man. We cannot converse with him. We cannot get any sort of personal reaction from him. We cannot get him to dance, sing, interact, think rationally, or do any sort of activity one would expect of a person. That doesn't mean we don't value his potential. Now, your response to this is:

It seems a far stretch, however, to say that a fetus or an infant are a fundamentally different person to who you are today. Sure, neither a fetus nor an infant are capable of self-consciousness, but would it be wrong of me to look back at old baby photos or even an ultrasound and claim 'That's me!'? I would argue that the continuum of a person's life begins when an individual emerges, therefore placing it at around 14 days after conception. Even though, as an infant, I wasn't capable of self-consciousness, I was still the same individual as I am today. And in the same way, if you abort a fetus, you are aborting the same individual who would have (most probably) become a mature adult.

So, why does the fact that a comatose person maintained their "personality" while comatose effect our view of whether or not it was wrong to kill him during the coma, since I think there is a continuity of personhood right from the embryonic stage?

Regards,

- Scrutinizer

Jerry Smith

Scrutinizer,

I do not really want to get hung up on the difference between unfertilized gametes and an individual embryo or young fetus. I grant you the difference. I do not hold, and have not held that the two are equivalent, though I did take issue with the suggestion that the gametes are no more likely to produce a person than a 'lamp-shade and stereo'. Contraception does interrupt the process of reproduction at a point before a person has emerged from it, just as an early term abortion does.

Yes, the innateness of the embryo's potential is relevant to what it means to be a distinct entity. Furthermore, the car analogy fails to capture this fact, since obviously the workers could split the pile of plastic and rubber and use it as parts in two separate automobiles. But innateness of potential still has no bearing on the concept of Personhood.

Of course we value his potential. This is only a part of the reason we value him as a person. This value is only part of why we call him a person. We say he is a person because he has a unique identity: even though he cannot express them, he has a unique set of ideas, moral standards, attitudes, and other personality traits.

The infant I once was is fundamentally the same person I am today. The embryo I once was is only the same individual I am today. Because it was not a person it would not make sense to say that it was fundamentally the same person I am today.

Our language is designed to speak flexibly about people. It is natural to look an ultrasound of a young fetus and say 'that's Bob', because we know Bob the person. We know the person that young fetus grew into.

What would be wrong? I think it would be wrong to look at an ultrasound of a young fetus and say 'she's friendly' or 'he smiles a lot' or 'she has her daddy's temper'.

You go from this:
to this:
Without explaining why you think personhood is a quality of the embryonic stage..

Last note, I am intersted to know why you think: Forgive my ignorance, but why 14 days? Did not an individual exist at 1 day after fertilization? Was that individual not just as much a part of the continuum of existence as one that is 14 days 'old'?

Scrutinizer

Jerry Smith,

I'll respond to the rest of your post when I have the time, because it's quite late and responding to your post requires deep thought! There's one bit that doesn't, however :

Let me quote directly from my philosophy study guide:

As for the rest of your post, that will have to wait. I'm not sure how long exactly you'll be waiting, because I'm back to school from the brief holiday period tomorrow, but I should get around to it reasonably soon.

Regards,

- Scrutinizer