How so? What about human beings who cannot produce gametes? Are they not human because they lack that property? But you say, "but for the gamete, there would be no human being.". That is true but irrelevant because you are conflating the hypothetical potential of a gamete to become something different, i.e. an actual human being, a different category of being (by being united with another gamete of the opposite sex) with an actual human being with potential. When an ovum is fertilized both it and the sperm cease to exist as such and become a single new entity, an entirely new thing; a new human being, one who has never existed before and will never exist again. Though a gamete is a necessary part of the creation of a human being it does not follow that it is the same category of thing as a human being.
It is a contradiction in terms to say that the potential and the actual can exist simultaneously in any thing. It is impossible. An actual gamete with potential and an actual human being with potential are two different kinds of being entirely.
Cordially,
I thought it was fairly obvious what the meaning of my sentence was, but on the chance that you actually misunderstood, my point was that, absent a gamete, you would not have a blastocyst, and absent a blastocyst, you would not have a fetus, etc. You have chosen a point in this chain as a demarcation based upon the notion that a gamete is merely a "part" of a human being. Frankly, I don't see how this mid-chain demarcation of yours is anything but arbitrary, since the gamete is an indispensible "part" of the chain itself.
But you say, "but for the gamete, there would be no human being.". That is true but irrelevant because you are conflating the hypothetical potential of a gamete to become something different, i.e. an actual human being . . . with an actual human being with potential."
The same reasoning applies to the blastocyst. You are yourself "conflating the hypothetical potential of a [blastocyst] to become something different, i.e. an actual human being [by way of the indispensible prerequisite of implantation] with an actual human being with potential."
Though a gamete is a necessary part of the creation of a human being it does not follow that it is the same category of thing as a human being.
So too the blastocyst.
I am also curious about your use of the word "potential". I'm not sure what your intended meaning is, but if it is a reference to the "potential" of future physical development, then gametes and blastocysts bear the same "potential" qualitites, since both are themselves prerequisites to physical development.