[atlaw]

Are you implying that metaphysically, a gamete is the same kind of being as a 25-year old?

No, not at all. I was engaging gridlock on the implication that all stages of human development must be assigned equivalence, which I thought was his contention when he stated in an earlier post that a blastocyst "is a certain stage in human development, kind of like a four-and-a-half year-old.”

[Diamond]

The asymmetrical comparison between a gamete and a 25 year-old threw me off. It is not the the accidental properties of a human being such as stages of development that must be assigned equivalence; the equivalence lies in the essence of humanness. A gamete itself is not a human being. It is a part of a human being, so it does not have the same essence of humanness. A gamete is an incidental feature of a human being.

25 years old is also an incidental property of of the essence, "human being", but that's pretty much where the similarity ends. In other words, it is not essential that a human being be 25 years old to be human. There are human beings that are other ages. Some human beings are 14 days old, for example. Hence, the property of being 25 years old is an incidental feature of humans. That having been said, a gamete and 25 year old are two very different kinds of incidental categories of human.

Cordially,