I'm not squeamish; most of the time, I relish my assumptions being challenged, and appreciate your doing so. My apologies for not responding earlier; I was at a conference the last couple of days.
Yes and it begs the question, "is it moral and/or ethical to boycott foreign made products and eliminate the only jobs available to many people in those under developed countries?"
I feel this is a disingenuous question. A better question to me is, "Is it moral and/or ethical for companies to take advantage of a lack of labor laws and dollar-a-day salaries in third world countries?" Workers are often intimidated and brutalized in the corporate-sponsored factories in underdeveloped countries, and the corporations are often complicit in the abuse. Is that ethical?
I would argue it is not a person. I would argue this because partly I think it matters whether a "person" has a heartbeat, or a brain; its cellular complexity makes a difference.
Genetic complexity doesn't count? Life processes of growth don't count? Is a human with an artificial heart not a person? Is a human whose cognitive brain functions have ceased due to disease or accident no longer a person?
No, genetic complexity doesn't count, or rather it is not the only thing that counts. A chimpanzee is comparably complex genetically to a human, yet its life is valued less than a human's (justifiably or not, is another topic). Obviously, you can come up with examples where a human's cognitive functions are profoundly impaired or a heart has been replaced with a machine. That artificial heart still beats; those lungs still draw oxygen, a human being with a machine heart is still exponentially more a person than an three-week-old embryo. That heart still beats in the chest of a cellularly and historically complex person. My point remains: a single-celled organism with the potential to become a human being is not yet a human being.
I would also argue this because of the sense of magnitude felt in proportion to its loss: an embryo lost to an an early-term miscarriage (if it is even noticed) is usually not grieved as a person when it dies, and its death is not equivalent in magnitude to the death of a viable fetus or actual infant.
Ah, ignorance is bliss? As long as we remain uninformed of millions of Rwandans being massacred and have formed no emotional attachments to them then they effectively don't exist as 'persons.' Is that it? That's the logic.
I feel this sidesteps the point. The emotional impact of an embryo's vs. a fetus' death is highly relevant, and the 'if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody care' argument doesn't address the essential thrust. If a) a zygote dies, and the mother was aware of this, or b) she births a stillborn baby who died at eight months, a child with fingers and eyes and a brain (and yes, a fingerless, eyeless person is still human), and she is aware of this, which loss is felt more keenly? For most people, the grief would be qualitatively (and no doubt quantitatively) different. This is not an argument based on emotional reasoning, in the sense that I am allowing my own emotion to override logic. It is an argument based on observation of emotion. I am arguing that we grieve when persons die; most of us do not grieve when pre- or potential persons die.
No, I'm not getting tired of you. Though no doubt some are tiring of me! Most of the time when people make the arguments you're making to me, they do it by literally or figuratively jabbing their fingers in my chest. So I appreciate the intelligence of your writing and thought.
I feel that that is a disingenuous question.
A chimpanzee is comparably complex genetically to a human ...
But not quite.
... yet its life is valued less than a human's (justifiably or not, is another topic).
I guess you would have to specify who values a chimpanzee life less than a human's. According to PETA cats are more valuable than humans. To the Sierra Club Spotted Owls are more important. It's not another topic really. How much one values human life is the question. If a chimp is not as important as a human then is there a difference between a chimp zygote and a human zygote?
(An interesting note: I just learned that the Spotted Owls are being decimated by Barred Owls, nearly wiped out in fact, in spite of eliminating logging on their turf, putting hundreds of people out of work, ruining businesses, killing towns and driving the price of wood products up for all.)
That artificial heart still beats; those lungs still draw oxygen, ... That heart still beats in the chest of a cellularly and historically complex person. My point remains: a single-celled organism with the potential to become a human being is not yet a human being.
I got your point. It was based on whether there was a heart or a brain. An artificial heart is hardly different than a small block fuel pump; metal and plastic that pushes fluids.
... a human being with a machine heart is still exponentially more a person than an three-week-old embryo.
In what way? The 3 wk old embryo will grow a human heart; right down to the unique DNA codes of that once in an eternity being in every cell of that heart. The guy with the transplant will never grow one again. Every material complexity of the fully developed adult is resident in the fertilized ovum the moment those two half DNA strands combine. And not before. You gave the parameters.
That heart still beats in the chest of a cellularly and historically complex person.
No cell in the body of a new born infant or an adult could possibly be as complex as that first cell which carries not only the instructions for the completed physical body and every cell it will ever generate but the capacity to carry them out without assistance other than nourishment. As far as history goes the coming together of two halves of seperate DNA strands links the histories of two bloodlines that go back for more centuries than anyone can count.
I feel this sidesteps the point. The emotional impact of an embryo's vs. a fetus' death is highly relevant, ...
Relevant to what? The question at hand was; "what makes a being human?"; or perhaps it was "what makes a human being worthy of its right to live?"
If a) a zygote dies, and the mother was aware of this, or b) she births a stillborn baby who died at eight months, ... and she is aware of this, which loss is felt more keenly? For most people, the grief would be qualitatively (and no doubt quantitatively) different.
I'm sure it would but what is your point?
This is not an argument based on emotional reasoning, in the sense that I am allowing my own emotion to override logic.
That's true it is an argument devoid of reason and logic and ruled by emotion by the very basis you lay it on. All you have said is 'awareness of the loss provokes emotion; the longer the awareness the greater the emotion.'
The emotional impact of an embryo's vs. a fetus' death is highly relevant, and the 'if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody care' argument doesn't address the essential thrust.
But you have made it the essential thrust of your argument. That was your reasoning whether you see it or not. I am simply responding to that.
I am arguing that we grieve when persons die; most of us do not grieve when pre- or potential persons die.
Firstly you have again asserted the "emotions are determinative" position here, secondly you are resting the validity of that position on the basis of a consensus of opinion rather than a critical analysis of the actual value of the object in question (the baby, human zygote, human embryo, whatever) and thirdly you have taken it upon yourself to arbitrarily decide that the object in question is valueless by classifying it with a negative qualifier "pre- or potential persons" thereby imputing valuelessness to the object rather than leading to that conclusion through reason and logic.
I would call that disingenuous. That is completely outside the realm of ethical debate. If you want to stand on the ground that a zygote or an embryo is not human and not a person (whatever the difference in those two is) then you should be honest enough to stick to terms that indicate your stance rather than using a vague non-term that defines nothing whatsoever. A thing is what it is and is not what it is not. There is no gray area about that. You or I may be unsure of what a thing is but our ignorance does not change what it actually is.
You don't like labels to define particular political/ideological views because someone might assign more value to one or the other or because it creates what to you seems to be an artificial division between fellow human beings that makes you uncomfortable but you have no problem using labels to differentiate between beings who are at different stages of development in order to assign a value scale to them. A scale that you are perfectly comfortable using to weigh life and death decisions. Imagine the percentage of persons who would be emotionally upset at that!