Reply #202: a question

[iverglas]

So, when does it become a human being from my reasoning? When it either becomes conscious, as in birth, or in the late term when it has the potential for consciousness. I mean if you give birth and the baby never wakes up, never becomes conscious, it's dead. If it becomes conscious, then it's a person. There's a side issue to be mentioned: it can only be a matter of public concern if it becomes conscious or shows that it can. Only then is there a reason for the public itself to have an interest in its maturing.

The only way that an organism can "show that it can" become conscious is if it does it.

If the fetus is delivered and fails to breathe, would you say that at some point prior to delivery it had met the "shows that it can" test? It showed that it could "become conscious", and yet it failed to live after being delivered?

It is in fact completely impossible to tell whether any particular fetus will survive birth, no matter how many brainwaves might be detected from it prior to delivery.

This is why we have the term "stillbirth" -- for a fetus that does not live after delivery, despite the fact that it had reached the stage of hypothetical viability (and thus the delivery is not a miscarriage).

A fetus that has reached the stage of hypothetical viability and exhibits no defects that are incompatible with life will probably survive delivery. But no one, absolutely no one, can be sure, ever, that any particular fetus will do that.

Failing to survive delivery obviously can't negate the pre-delivery signs of "consciousness" that you are relying on as your criterion for becoming a human being. So the upshot would be that a fetus that you characterized as a human being pre-delivery failed to meet your criterion for being a person post-delivery.

And I'm afraid that just does not make sense to me.