• Please read the Announcement concerning missing posts from 10/8/25-10/15/25.
  • This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

What Makes a Person?


You are right. I did not click on the link. If the text could hold application of logic I would not click neither. Just don't have time to read. It had nothing to do with emotions - did I express any emotions in my analyses? It had nothing to do with sarcasm, - I am not expressing any as soon as you explained your point. The text you suggested did not hold application of logic, you did not point to flaws in my logic - why could I expect to find anything different clicking on the link. Now you are pointing that my flaw was that I did not read the article. Well, OK, I don't read as a rule - does not matter if it is a link from you or from other side or from different side. Your text was long enough to provide me with my reading for a day. I did not focus on parasite; it was just equal focus in the end, and I found it as unsubstantiated as other points I looked at. Again, what I waited was for you to find flaws in my logic in application to a very long text you submitted. Also I do not consider you to be on opposite side, even if we have disagreements. I expect us to work together to find the truth and common points. If your point holds logic and looks valid I would not feel myself defeated, but corrected.
 

This is what I had hoped for....and did not expect. Thank You.
The Idea was to present something to gain interest in further discussion, and see where it would lead. I did this as a means to see just how serious people were about actually discussin (thinking about) the complex issue of Abortion in the United States, and I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to see both you, and talloulou using debate techniques that actuallt further a discussion, rather than stifling it.

I thank you both very much......if you like, I would be happy to play with the Logic you set forth, and we can actually debate this.
 
tecoyah said:
Are you actually so dense, that having a scientist use the language to express findings in a way that is compelling to the non-scientist seems nonsense?
Click to expand...

The "scientist" made a most unscientific and specious statement as was most of his writing. And I find using invectives to make ones point a sure sign of argument lacking merit.

Maybe if we make it even more simplified you might comprehend what the intent of the statement is:

When the little Spermy and Eggy get together, they are very small.
Click to expand...

Sorry but if you can't have an intelligent adult conversation I have no interest. I tried to discuss two points the article made, you decline to discuss them on an adult level and then make some bogus claims about the other post here about which we have no clue what you are saying.

Oh well, we all tried.
 



In this article, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan were trying to argue for the case of person or personhood as if the term "person" or "personhood" is something not only different from the term "human being" but a paramount determinant of human worth; i.e. a person or personhood is an essence of human being distinct from the corporeal human being and hence determine when human being is actualized. Aso, they seemed to suggest that there was a moment in time during fetal development in which an event of acquisition of "person" or "personhood" occurs that marked the beginning of individual human existence. The authors suggested that human thought, i.e. human thinking, was the key to determine when that person or personhood is acquired But in their failure to define the term "person" or "personhood" they committed a fallacy of ambuiquity and equivocation. The authors also committed fallacy of distraction based on irrelevant facts.


Certainly the authors mentioned some biological facts regarding conception and weekly stages of embryonic/fetal development. But the scientific facts are irrelevant to the argument of personhood. Biological facts only support findings of biological existence such as a zygote or a fetus. Biological facts do not provide evidence to support an abstract idea or expression that can be defined variously in the context of philosophy, religion, or legal matters. In philosophy, personhood can be argued in terms of ensoulment, and in religion the uncaused person is assumed to be the divinity, both of which are not provable. In legal matters, a person can be defined as a business corporation, which proved nothing in terms of biological fact. In common language the term "person" is simply another expression for expressing the term "human being". Therefore, the authors' purpose in mentioning biological facts in the context of arguing for personhood is not only a fallacious distraction but also a wilful abuse of scientific authority to mislead an argument.


Furthermore, human thought or thinking do not occur even in infants just because neural connections are linkup in the cerebral cortex during the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy. Also, the faculty of thought does not turn on completely all at once like switching on a light bulb. The ability to think develops progressively over time from infancy to adulthood. Even so, some will never achieve a normal thought processes due to diseases such as down's syndromes, schezophrenia, and other mental disorders. And some may lose it due to Alzheimer's disease or in a coma. Therefore, the disability from thinking does not render one a non-human. Neither the diminished capacity to think properly degrades us into the class of chimpanzees.


There is no logical evidence linking the faculty of thinking to the notion of personhood. The term person can be used in various ways to express various notions relating to human expression and experiience. It is like a pronoun that substitutes a noun. When we say he is a happy or edgy person with type A personality, we are refering to the traits as expressed by the individual in his interaction with others and the environment. This involves not only thinking, but also subcousious mind and all the hormonal influences to the whole being as construed by the genes. If thinking can be used as a marker for personhood, then feeling, reflexing, or sensing is just as good to qualify as a marker to personhood.


Despite the lack of definition, the authors appeared to equate "person" or "personhood" with the term "soul" in their mentioned of "ensoulment" when asking the question of when personhood arises. But the concept of "soul" is an abstract idea that exists only in the faculty of philosophy, religion, or paranormal. It is certainly not something that can be tested in the lab of scientific discovery. Unless someone can come up with an experiment that can observe, quantify, measure, analyze, and test the gain or loss of the object or phenomenon called "person" or "personhood" in a developing human entity, then any attempt to legitimize the term is nothing more than trying to practisie science with voodoos or paranormal mumbo jumbo.


Notice that the authors stated that ""If you deliberately kill a human being, it's called murder" and then in later statement the authors concluded "So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood?" Here, the authors committed a fallacious error of equivoction. The main point of the authors were to attempt to prove that a person is not the same as human being. It is something supposedly more essential with right to life than a human being. Then, in one breath the authors upheld what the prolife people had been telling all the time that killing a human being is the same as killing a person, i.e. both are considered murder. They just knocked themselves out without even consciously knowing it.


Finally, the authors' misleading take in equating killing of haploid gamate cells such as sperms and unfertilized eggs to fertilized eggs is ridiculous. Unfertilized eggs or sperms by themselves as haploid with half the chromosmes number will never develop into anything except to die when not in union lack alone ever becoming a fetus or baby. A fertilized egg when in normal healthy condition and undisturbed by abortionist will develop into a baby in 9 months. A human being is a human being when it is conceived no matter the size shape and form. Time should not change the truth if truth is unchangeable.
 
Now....thats what I am talking about....excellent. The majority of your points are valid, and form the basis for the discussion in the first place. The article has great flaws in logic, and supposition based entirely on opinion. Mr. Sagan and his wife wrote an article of opinion in an attempt to get people discussing the issue, much as you are doing now. This in my mind is preferable to calling each other names and pointing fingers.

I am going to the museum with the kids....but will return to this topic later.

Thank You
 
jimmy -
Unifying is greater then isolating
Click to expand...

This is the basis for your position? "Unifying is greater then isolating".

Was the unification of the Nazi's greater than the isolated indivuals that opposed it? Greater meaning what? Better? Stronger and larger? Either way it is still flawed.

My isolated insight regarding spirituality is not lesser than the idiotic billion in the Catholic Church.
 
BodiSatva said:
This is the basis for your position? "Unifying is greater then isolating".
Click to expand...


Well if we look at the context in which I used the word: “Unifying”, we can see that I’m trying to make you notice that the very life you are isolating begins its life one with mankind. So not only is the unborn one with us in the genetic capacity but it is one with us even on a physical level too. Therefore, attempts made by you to distance mankind from the foetus will fail. There is nothing as close to us as the foetus, and why is it so close to us? Why does it share our DNA? Why is it one with us?

Answer:

Because: it is one of us.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…