Is A Fertilized Human Egg A Person?

TL;DR? Knowing if it is a person or isn't a person is not enough to inform oneself about any particular situation, we must also have an idea of everything else going on around it.

This began to get a little long-winded as I went into a wider metaphysical argument over the issue of "identity" lol.

The problem with finding a specific definition and then sticking to it is that the definition-sticking (the process with which one gets incredibly caught up in the nuances of what something might mean) is not the intended purpose behind trying to decide if something merits that or another definition.

One might just as easily ask the question "Am I the same person that I was 10 years ago?" Every single cell in your body has been replaced, your demeanor and characteristics have also probably changed, so does that mean you're the same person? This is another example of mistaking fiction-for-fact (ala Watts), because perhaps the best description (as the Buddha coined) is "processes". What I call "I" is just the current iteration of a long-happening process, "I" now is the process as it appears today, "I" 22 years ago was the process as it appeared prior to birth.

Perhaps the more intriguing question is not whether a "fertilised human egg is a person?" but whether the inseparable processes that require a human to live do not also constitute person-hood? What is a human without oxygen? A human without vegetation and animals to eat? A human without the right temperature conditions? "I" would be a very dead human. So if what one is - a "human process" - cannot live outside its environment, then both must have to exist mutually. If both exist mutually, and you cannot have one without the other, then wouldn't that inherently imply that they are one and the same process?

So again the question of personhood arises, but as I explained above, if a human and everything that surrounds the human are just the same process then what is the "personhood" label trying to do exactly? It's is trying to create a little mental box around some of the process to separate it all into "parts". These "parts" are the fiction we mistake for fact thus we think of the human as somehow being "separated" or "outside" one's own environment - which is clearly impossible. Mental boxes can be very useful, because one might want "to meet up for coffee at 9:30am on Wednesday", but humans like their boxes to have sharp corners, but the issue is that when absolutely every process in the entire universe is intimately connected with every other process then the lines start getting blurry (in truth there are no lines, they are the lines of all the mental boxes we've constructed).

So this brings us back to the poor fertilised egg and it's personhood. If we feel inclined to create a mental box into which we place the idea of "personhood", then perhaps we should give our mental box a little lee-way with which to bend to our prevailing understanding of the universe and its fundamental relationships.

But WT&%("$&%^*( does that mean exactly?

Well now we come full circle to my first point about "definition-sticking". If ultimately the distinctions we have created are mental boxes we are placing upon the universe then it would seem silly to debate the idea of personhood solely for the sake of its own definition.

Why exactly are we looking for a definition? (Other than for intellectual curiosity)? Because we're curious about where personhood starts? For purposes of philosophy? Abortion? Well-being (in the case of non-human persons such as some animals)?

Well if our purposes behind trying to find the definition are so we may find what "respectful for life" then obviously our word-ly definition won't contain the entire philosophical and moral debate over "respect". So a definition for definition's sake is a meaningless exercise in "who can find the most nuanced mental box" for the part of the universe our other mental boxes have created coincidentia oppositorum.

So what I am saying is the idea of "personhood" even if such an idea can be found and agreed upon is only a small portion of the larger debate on the state of this "[strike]person[/strike]-egg". A much better understanding of the situation would be gleamed if we tried to look more at the intentions and expected outcomes of the entire process behind the desire to grant "person", respect for life? Who's life? In what wider context must this person or society be respected? What other moral considerations surround this egg?

Everything in the universe is intimately related to everything else, our mental boxes are not "fact", so it should be of no surprise that there should have to be multiple and various considerations behind why something should be considered one thing and not another.

Is it a person? No, it is an egg as stated

The egg contains the potential for life as a human being.

I think that last part is where the importance lies.

I am a mother with two beautiful daughters and I love them very much.

however

No. A fertilized human egg in it's early stages is just a clump of lifeless cell's yet to receive life. It is a parasite in the mothers body, leaching and feeding off of the mothers life stores, blood, liquids, vitamens and minerals while it rapidly multiplies until it begins to take on a human shape/form. At about...six weeks of gestation. The first signs of life begins with the activation and sudden pulse of electrical currents and the heart begins to beat. It is at this time, I believe, when "Human Life" can be debated. For me, even at this stage I do not feel that the spirit has connected with the body, the electrical currents causes the fetus to twitch and spasm but it is not of it's own free will, just a bunch of chemical reactions causing it to twitch and grow. For me, I feel it is then up to the mother to decide when the spirit has connected. Each "Person" is individual and unique. It could be early it could be later on. For me it was in the week fifteen-ish stages when those clump of cells sapping me of my lifes energy became alive and something more.

Like Tai said. It is the "Potential" that is most important. It CAN become a human....but scientifically it is just a parasite for quite a few long, sickening weeks At least for me I was sick with both of my pregnancies...completely bed ridden. Ask anyone from the 2009 gathering I went from "Oh hey look! Jedi!" to "Oh god leave me alone!"

"Person", to me, implies someone with self-agency. That's why "legal persons" are typically those that have reached the age of majority so they can make their own choices, or (more unpopularly) corporations.

A fertilized egg is well on its way to potentially becoming a fetus, and is a life form--whether we classify it as its own, or an extension of its mother until some arbitrary time we'll decide later, since we don't know much about how we define life or its beginnings and distinctions--but it's not really got any agency.

Ecthalion wrote:

Arkayik wrote: When the appendix, gall bladder or a kidney are removed, do those cells constitute a person?

I would say not. They have no potential to become humans (unless modified by clone engineering). Whereas a fertilised human egg has the potential to become a unique person. I see no comparison between the two.

If the Blastula is similarly removed, it's potential also ends without "modification by medical-engineering". This life-form would cease "to-be" outside the host-body...

I see your no-comparison and raise-you a comparison...!


{I acknowledge the inherent weakness in analogy, in that one winds up discussing the merits (or lack) of the analog instead of the original matter at hand...}

Arkayik wrote: When the appendix, gall bladder or a kidney are removed, do those cells constitute a person?

Br. John wrote: Is a fertilized human egg a person?

A classicaly provocative question with a subjective answer but worthy of exploring if only to better refine our own knowledge and values.

It's life
It's human

That's enough for me for it to deserve respect and have value, so it should be handeled prudently. If for no other reason than the procreation of our species. Thus sacred, for me at least.

Is it a person? I don't know. That doesn't change my mind.

To many definitions of "person" in the dictionary.

Don't know.

Any decision would be the Mother's prerogative, ultimately.

I think the real question is whether the high opinion we have of ourselves is warranted. What makes a grown person so much better than an (un)fertilized egg, or anything else for that matter?

I only asked the first part of the question I had in mind. Here's the rest.

At what point (or under what conditions), if any, should a woman be forced to continue a pregnancy against her will?