There is no brain in the fertilized egg, it hasn't been built yet. By the same reasoning you use to give the zygote rights any hypothetical future 3d bioprinter(or nanomachine system) is worthy of rights.
I know you are probably a fan of sci-fi, but does everything have to be compared to machinery or theoretical future developments? Just a gripe I have.
The zygote is a human being, developing neurons and neural pathways as it grows. She/he eventually develops a brain. The zygote is not a thinking being, but it is objectively a being. A brain is a mecessary organ for life to continue to exist, but it has to grow and develop from the moment of conception. Heck, there are many scholars and much research that suggests the brain does not stop developing until the early 20's, into adulthood.
There is a difference between a minimally active brain, a brain in a cryonic state, and no brain but the mere instructions to build a brain.
There is a difference between having a brain and not having one. However, we are talking about unborn human children in very very early development (scientifically at the very least). Also, consider that if conciousness is indeed the value necessary to give personhood, one would have to have an objective timeframe. When does a child become human? The difference cognitively in the development of the unborn child is minimal. A baby that is about to be born has about as much self-awareness as a zygote even though the brain structure greatly differs. Let's look at what some highly educated people who have researched and analyzed the subject thoroughly.
"Brainwaves
1 make for an interesting candidate criterion, inasmuch as the current clinical and legal definition of death—the end of personhood—is the cessation of detectable brainwaves.
The logic goes something like this: if we define the ending boundary of personhood as death, and we define death as the loss of brainwaves, then possessing brainwaves must be a necessary condition for personhood; indeed, we are implicitly defining a person as a human organism with brainwaves. Tying brainwaves to the broader criterion of sentience, we see why this might make sense, at least superficially: brainwaves indicate the presence of cerebral activity, and cerebral activity is necessary for cognition, which, some argue, is necessary for personhood. If we accept this reasoning, then personhood would begin when the human organism first exhibits brainwaves, around six weeks after fertilization.
This logic is based on a misunderstanding of the clinical and legal definition of death. Organismal death is properly understood as the irreversible loss of the being’s internal self-integration. This “self-integration” is what makes an organism a whole rather than a collection of parts. As soon as an organism stops acting as a self-integrating entity, it has stopped acting as an organism at all and ceases to be one. Pro-lifers agree that death is the ending boundary of personhood, because at that moment the entity transitions from being a human organism to being a human corpse. In other words, the entity no longer meets the minimum conditions for personhood—human and organism.
Conceptually, the distinction between declining organism and disintegrating corpse is clear enough, but how to measure exactly when that transition has taken place has changed as the understanding of biology has developed. Centuries ago, the cessation of heartbeat was the clinical measure used to establish when death had taken place. As technology and scientific knowledge increased, it became clear that cessation of brainwaves correlated much more precisely with this final loss of organismal integration in postnatal humans. While not uncontroversial, cessation of brainwaves is currently the best generally accepted correlate of death that is clinically measurable. Cessation of brainwaves is not death any more than cessation of heartbeat was death, but it is something measurable that happens at about the same time as death. Therefore, because it is difficult to measure death directly, brainwaves are used as a legal benchmark to say that death has taken place. All the while, the philosophical understanding on which the legal definition is based has remained unchanged.
Given that cessation of brainwaves is not death but only a measurable proxy for death, the current legal definition of death does not imply that possession of brainwaves is a necessary condition for personhood. Rather, being an organism is a necessary condition for personhood, and this is why death—the cessation of being an organism—is the ending boundary. The analogous beginning boundary, then, is not when the entity first exhibits brainwaves but rather when the entity first becomes an organism. There is a profound difference between a living human organism with brainwaves and a disintegrating corpse without brainwaves. There is, however, no such profound difference between a living human fetus without brainwaves and a living human fetus with brainwaves.
Thus, the case for brainwaves by analogy with death fails. The pro-choicer could still fall back on the argument that sentience is really the key criterion, with initiation of brainwaves serving as the critical threshold that makes sentience a binary variable.
This argument is difficult to defend, however.
While we have no good standard for measuring consciousness or determining when a morally meaningful level of consciousness has been attained, we can safely say that a six-week-old fetus is in no sense sentient, despite exhibiting brainwaves. While brainwaves are a necessary precursor for sentience, so are neurons, which start developing much earlier. In short, the initiation of brainwaves does not mark a transition in sentience at all, and there is no reason to claim that initiation of brainwaves marks a transition in cognition or even the ability for future consciousness that is any more significant than a multitude of other developmental landmarks. As a result, it is an arbitrary and inadequate threshold."
-Stanford Students for Life
https://prolife.stanford.edu/theory/premise2a-9.html
"Myth 13: "A human
person begins with �brain birth,� the formation of the primitive nerve net, or the formation of the cortex�all physiological structures necessary to support thinking and feeling."
Fact 13: Such claims are all pure mental speculation, the product of imposing philosophical (or theological) concepts on the scientific data, and have no scientific evidence to back them up. As the well-known neurological researcher D. Gareth Jones has succinctly put it,
the parallelism between "brain death" and "brain birth" is scientifically invalid. "Brain death" is the gradual or rapid cessation of the functions of a brain.
"Brain birth" is the very gradual acquisition of the functions of a developing neural system. This developing neural system is not a brain. He questions, in fact, the entire assumption and asks what neurological reasons there might be for concluding that an incapacity for consciousness becomes a capacity for consciousness once this point is passed. Jones continues that the alleged symmetry is not as strong as is sometimes assumed, and
that it has yet to be provided with a firm biological base.41
Myth 14: "A �person� is defined in terms of the active exercising of �rational attributes� (e.g., thinking, willing, choosing, self-consciousness, relating to the world around one, etc.), and/or the active exercising of �sentience� (e.g., the feeling of pain and pleasure).
Fact 14: Again, these are philosophical terms or concepts, which have been illegitimately imposed on the scientific data.
The scientific fact is that the brain, which is supposed to be the physiological support for both "rational attributes" and "sentience," is not actually completely developed until young adulthood. Quoting Moore:
"Although it is customary to divide human development into prenatal (before birth) and postnatal (after birth) periods, birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change in environment.
Development does not stop at birth. Important changes, in addition to growth, occur after birth (e.g., development of teeth and female breasts). The brain triples in weight between birth and 16 years;
most developmental changes are completed by the age of 25."42(Emphasis added.)
One should also consider simply the logical�and very real�consequences if a "person" is defined only in terms of the actual exercising of "rational attributes" or of "sentience." What would this mean for the following list of adult human beings with diminished "rational attributes": e.g., the mentally ill, the mentally retarded, the depressed elderly, Alzheimer�s and Parkinson�s patients, drug addicts, alcoholics�and for those with diminished "sentience,"
e.g., the comatose, patients in a "vegetative state," paraplegics, and other paralyzed and disabled patients, diabetics or other patients with nerve or brain damage, etc.? Would they then be considered as only human beings but not also as human persons? Would that mean that they would not have the same ethical and legal rights and protections as those adult human beings who are considered as persons? Is there really such a "split" between a human being and a human person?"
- Dr. Diane N. Irving, former career-appointed bench research biochemist/biologist (NIH, NCI, Bethesda, MD), an M.A. and Ph.D. philosopher (Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.), and Professor of the History of Philosophy, and of Medical Ethics.
https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/wdhbb.html
By the way a cryonic state is a frozen hibernating state, usually meant literally. I believe you mean a comatose or vegetative state.
You do understand categories are flexible? The word human in and of itself is flexible in what it defines. The zygote is not a person, it is a machine that will build a person through self replication. I could say an AI is human, and perhaps in the future it will be defined as human. An alien lifeform may be called human, as well as humanlike entities from parallel universes.
Again with the sci-fi. EVERYONE IS A "MACHINE" THAT CONTINUES TO DEVELOP AND GROW THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRETY OF LIFE. The zygote is no different in that regard.
Calling a tree human, even if we all agreed it is human( perhaps some nano machines reassembling it into a human one day), does not grant it rights, at least not till it becomes an actual person. Calling something something does not confer rights, rights are innate, some would use the metaphor of god given. The zygote is mere nanomachinery, or molecular machinery, with the instructions to turn the incoming food into a human person through self-replication.
Does the tree grow and develop like a human does like the zygote? Your machine argument is poor and you just keep repeating it.
No you do not need an ability to make decisions nor rational thought, the mere ability to have qualia, to have feelings, to be an actual "someone" instead of some thing. For there to be a something it is like to be.
So feelings indicate personhood and value? (I don't quite understand).
An animal may not introspect, but if it feels, if it is aware, if it is conscious, if it has qualia, if there is something it is like to be that animal, it is worthy of rights. On the other hand if it is nothing it is like to be something, because it is not a person but a thing, something that does not feel, something that is not even capable of consciousness, then such has no rights, animate or inanimate it is but an object
So you are saying feelings indicate value, correct? If I decide to somehow get rid of all feeling (I'm assuming you mean emotional) would I not be a person? Depressed people often either feel extreme sorrow or nothing at all. Are they people?
Omega Supreme Holopsicon
or anyone else who wants to talk to me about this, pm me if you wish.
