No, it's a joke, son. A play on words. It pokes fun at your contextual confusion. You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense.
I wrote: "A human being is not a string of English letters," You replied: "Yes it is. The first letter is "A", the second is "h", the third is "u", ... A word is not the same thing as its referent. I am not a word or set of words. I am a human being. The English words "human being" refer to members of the species homo sapiens. Those members of the species are human beings.
Now that you've finally learned those basics, how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently.
I wrote: "When I say that a human being is an organism, I am talking about the referent. When you deny that, and claim that a human being is a string of letters, you are talking about the words "human being". This kind of equivocation is basic sophistry." You replied: "No, it is mockery. I was doing to you what you were doing to me. And you still don't get it." Mockery is a form of sophistry.
No it isn't. But it is a form of communication, and you are definitely not getting the message.
You seem to be interested in playing games, in mocking, and throwing insults around.
Well, since you just "ignore" any reasoned approach, I'm left with little else to keep my interest.
I'm simply interested in getting to the bottom of the issue
LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid, Mr. "I ignored it"! I nearly soaked my keyboard! That line alone has made all this repetitious typing worthwhile.
You wrote: "It does not follow. Who taught you logic, a third-grader?" Another ad hominem.
It's hilarious how you insist you are a philosophy professor and don't even know what sophistry or ad hominems are! You're not fooling anyone.
You wrote: "Also, "conception" labels a set of observations during which there is no "at"." Conception is not a set of observations. We observe conception; but conception is in the real world.
Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations (another point you once conceded, now disavow). Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events.
You wrote: "you even agreed that the observations fell along a continuum." To which post are you referring?
Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."
You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!! Prove it.
I'll bet you have a nice collection of broken records at home. The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF. However, it is DEMONSTRATED every time it is OBSERVED. I know I've said it all zillion times before, but you go on and on anyway as though I never did.
You wrote: "AT CONCEPTION" DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. Perhaps it does not make sense to you, but it does to me.
Therein lies your malfunction.
You wrote: "I point out the specific errors in your logic--and you ignore them everytime." Show me one error in my logic.
What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you.
BTW, since you choose to put a blind spot over my refutations, I would urge you to take your syllogism to one of your philosophy professors (assuming you are even a philosophy student) and ask him if the argument is valid. He will in very short order tell you why it is not. Maybe the one-on-one interaction will break the spell.
You wrote: "You blind yourself to the obvious both in observation and logic." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "Look. It is patently clear that you are deliberately blinding yourself." Another ad hominem. You wrote: "This has now become a psychological issue, not a logical one." Another ad hominem.
You might want to do yourself a favor and look up the meaning of "ad hominem" so that you can begin to stop embarrassing yourself.
I wrote: "Nothing that Curtis says in the quotation you provide shows that human beings don't come into existence at conception." You replied: "Maybe you are not serious about these replies. Maybe you are just some kid at a computer laughing about how frustrating you can be. I hope so." Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.
Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua. In your case it is so bad that you even claim to have proven they don't exist at all.
The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you.
You wrote: "I Wait, I can make one last gasp--"at conception" doesn't make sense, since biology shows us that the process of conception is continuous. Biology shows us no such thing, because biology is not metaphysics. From the biological point of view there is no instant when an organism comes into existence. But biology does not deal with existence per se. Existence belongs to metaphysics. And from the metaphysical point of view, there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence.
Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so.
You wrote: "Think before you post next time." Another ad hominem.
Another embarrassing reply.
Son? Another ad hominem. An insult is an ad hominem. An ad hominem is simply any comment (of any sort) that is about the person, rather than about the position or argument.
You wrote: "A play on words."
Telling jokes and playing games is not conducive to any philosophical discussion aimed at discovering truth.
You wrote: "You don't get it, that makes you, as I said, dense."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Now that you've finally learned those basics"
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "how about going back three posts and responding to me intelligently."
Another ad hominem.
I wrote: "Mockery is a form of sophistry"
You replied: "No it isn't."
Yes it is. All use of ad hominems in a philosophical discussions are forms of sophistry. (See for example, the discussions between Socrates and the sophists in the Sophist, the Gorgias.) Mockery is an ad hominem. Therefore mockery is a form of sophistry.
You wrote: "and you are definitely not getting the message."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "LOL!!!!! Who are you trying to kid,"
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Mr. "I ignored it"!
As far as I can tell, I only ignored fallacies (e.g. heaps of ad hominems) and red herrings. But, you are welcome to point to something that I should not have ignored, and which shows your position to be correct and my position to be false.
You wrote: "Conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observations"
I agree.
You wrote: "(another point you once conceded, now disavow)."
I do not disavow that conception, like everything else in the empirical world, is known through observation. On the contrary, I fully agree with that claim.
You wrote: "Those observations (to which we give the name "conception") are observed to be a continuous series of events."
On this point we disagree. That is because you are taking "observation" to mean merely "biological" observation. But observation is broader than that. Hume, in his Treatise has a section where he talks about a murder, and says that if one analyzes the murder (say, a stabbing) into all its component events: the knife moving toward the chest, the knife penetrating the skin, the knife severing the intercostal muscles, the knife penetrating the heart, etc. one will never find any moral facts. He is right. If one views the stabbing in that merely biological way, one will never see the immorality of the action. But that does not mean that morality is an illusion. It shows that this biological way of observing the event is not exhaustive. Likewise, the biological way of observing conception is not exhaustive.
Post 203: "I agree that from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*."
Of course, from a biological point of view, there is no special *instant*, just as from a biological point of view there is no immorality to the act of murder.
You wrote: THERE IS NO SPECIFIC POINT OF CONCEPTION!!!
I replied: "Prove it."
You replied: The FACT of continuity through the PROCESS of conception is a matter of OBSERVATION not logical PROOF."
If you can show that observation shows that there is no specific point of conception, I will abandon my position. But you can only show that *biological* observation does not detect any specific point in conception. *Biological* observation, however, is not exhaustive. *Philosophical* observation shows that there is a specific point of conception. You have not refuted that, (although you have repeatedly *asserted* its falsity).
I wrote: Show me one error in my logic.
You replied: "What AGAIN!? Is that so you can just "ignore" it again? How I know if I type it AGAIN that you will even read it?! No thanks. I'll just urge you to go back and actually do me the courtesy of reading my posts to you."
I have read all your posts in this thread. If I have made one logical error, feel free to point it out. Otherwise, your accusation is empty.
I wrote: "Name one thing in the Curtis quotation that shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant."
You replied: "Curtis was making a general statement about how people like you have an interminable mental block regarding continua."
If that is the case, then Curtis was constructing an ad hominem. His ad hominem does not show that human beings do not come into existence at an instant. No ad hominem (no matter what its content) shows that human beings do not come into existence at an instant.
You wrote: "The fact that I have to give this explanation at all is a testament to your shallow thoughtlessness in reading my posts to you."
Another ad hominem.
You wrote: "Metaphysics says no such thing, though some metaphysicians have falsely claimed so."
Merely asserting that metaphysics does not show that there is an instant at which an organism comes into existence does not make it so. If a biologist insists that philosophy does not show that human actions have any moral quality, that does not make it so. You are trying to use biological observations to refute philosophical observations. But biological observations do not refute philosophical observations. If you want to know why that is the case, read Maritain's An Introduction to Philosophy.
-A8