Does he have a valid point?

[Zzyzx]

.

Bill Maher:
"When I hear from people that religion doesn't hurt anything, I say really? Well besides wars, the crusades, the inquisitions, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, the suppression of women, the suppression of homosexuals, fatwas, honor killings, suicide bombings, arranged marriages to minors, human sacrifice, burning witches, and systematic sex with children, I have a few little quibbles. And I forgot blowing up girl schools in Afghanistan."

Some say "The good outweighs the bad." If so what is that weighty good?

Many say "That is just the other religions." Is that true?

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 304 by Paprika]

The embryo is living. Yes, we can agree on this scientific fact.

That is great. But you must excuse me if I carry on discussion with others who disagree on this issue.

Some people say that embryos aren't living? Weird idea. But yes, go ahead with those who disagree on that point. It's odd that anyone would think that living cells are not cells that are living ?

You have those people, and you also have people who go

"Okay. Agreeing (for the moment / sake of discussion) that embryos are living. "

as though it's not a simple biological fact, as we both know it is.

Well, Z isn't saying that embryos AREN'T living.. he is AGREEING that they are living ( FTSOTA )

But it seems to me that Z would like to put the debate on whether or not embryos are living or not aside for the moment, in order to come back to it later, perhaps, in another discussion, perhaps about the meaning of the word "living". Who knows?

You should ask Z if he REALLY thinks that embryos are living or not.. since this is such a hot potato topic.

Are there MANY people you talk to , other than that potentially stoneheaded Z, who say that embryos are NOT living?

You will find DNA in hair and skin cells. Hair and skin are PARTS of humans, but not fully human beings themselves. We don't say that hair and nails are beings. We say that they are PARTS of beings. But we don't fret too much over cut HUMAN hair or nails. Yet , they contain DNA...

DNA is USUALLY defined as a nucleic acid and not as a human person. Is destroying human DNA ( acid ) tantamount to murder to you?

No. Rather, any cell that contains human DNA is a human cell.

Just to make sure. do we agree that.
So, anything with DNA might not be a human PERSON, that therefore if we kill some humans cells that does NOT mean we are murdering a human PERSON.

Are we on the same page here?

This is the classic category error. You should avoid the fallacy as it invalidates any argument built on it.

There you go with anticipating errors that don't exist. Not every cell is a child, but some cells are.

OK, good.. I anticipate too often.. A problem with my writing style.. working on it.

NOT every bunch of cells is a human being.
SOME bunches of cells are what we call a human being.

The question is about what bunch of cells are human beings and what are not yet human beings.

Got it.

No category mistake there.

So this word "offspring" is the same as "child" to you..I agree that in some way, that's true. BUT an offspring may not be yet human. A conglomerate of cells is not what I call a human or a child.

If the offspring is human (adjective) by its DNA, it is a human (noun). That's clear, I hope?

Human CELLS are human.
What do you MEAN by offspring. that it COMES from humans?

I looked up the def of "offspring".. yeah. pretty much means child, son, daughter.. that kind of thing.. not really embryo or fetus or that other kind of thing.

But to me, child, offspring means the same thing.
What is the distinction I'm missing here?

Why is this offspringy thing so important to the debate?

I suppose that you mean that a human fertilized egg is a child, whereas, I only see a fertilized egg as a potential child, and not YET a child. To become a human BEING means more to me than a fertilized egg. When I look at an egg, I don't see a child.

That's a problem with your perception.

It's not a "problem" with my perception at all.. I could say the same thing about your perception.

The point is that we have DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS given the same perceptions.
It's not about PERCEPTION, it's about a judgement on personhood.

You don't see a human person, and I don't see an egg.
We see a bunch of cells and you CALL that a person and I CALL that an egg.

We PERCEIVE the same things. ( generally )

Let me take a hundred people.. show them the picture of an egg... are they going to call it a CHICKEN or a freaking EGG.. what do YOU think they are going to say?

You seem to be having a semantic problem.

Do you think that all fertilized eggs are the animals that produced the eggs? There is no difference between an egg and a chicken or an egg and a snake or an egg and a duck billed platypus, or an egg and and an ostrich?

As before, there are differences in physical maturity, but they are members of the same species.

Yep, but they aren't at the same level of development. You might want to CALL them members, but that is your opinion. Other people have the opinion that they are not members YET.

Some are not YET fully chickens, and some are.
If I steped on a chrysalid, would you say that a butterfly dies or a chrysalid died?

Doesn't matter to you.. no distinction between the two states?
You only see one state.. Butterfly ?

I don't know if most biologists would agree with you.
Some MIGHT..

We should ask those that might why. BUT BACK TO CHICKENS....

Those that are NOT yet fully chickens, we call EGGS...
Or at least in most stores where I purchase eggs.

The whole issue right now is semantics.

You seem to want to call an egg a .. chicken. OK.. call it that.
IS THAT the reason people shouldn't have abortions, because of how you prefer to CALL things?

This is a semantics issue ?

Well, why DON'T we settle this really difficult issue using semantics.
But lets not forget that BABIES are not just words. And neither are "mothers".. or grown female fetuses.

And neither are eggs or bunch of cells.

You can change the meanings of the words we use all day long to suit yourself, but that wont even come CLOSE to address the real ethical issues involved.

Words are words.
We are talking about people having difficult decisions to make.

Lets do MORE to help them make them than change the meanings of words.

I would call an embryo an organism, but an organism might not yet be a HUMAN being, as there are potential human beings and actual human beings. Both are organisms.

And I'm the one with the perception problem, though.
Weird.

As above, "If the offspring is human (adjective) by its DNA, it is a human (noun). That's clear, I hope?" And again, there are differences in physical maturity, but they are members of the same species.

Yes, if something is human, it's human. GREAT POINT!
It's the kind of point everyone can get behind.

But just because SOMETHING IS HUMAN does NOT mean that it is a human PERSON YET.
HUMAN TOENAILS are human, too.
We don't cry when someone clips them.

When you say "member" you seem to be implying "child" or human person.
YES, the cells are a part of the cells of a member of the human species.

But you miss the point.

The CELLS might not be PERSONS YET.
ORGANISMS might not yet be PERSONS.

The IMPORTANT word to focus on is YET.

You seem to say that the organism IS ALREADY a human PERSON.
You seem to say that the cells ARE ALREADY a human person.

I say they may not be YET a human person.

Do you see the distinction?
YOU don't admit to the YET part of my statement.. for you , it seems as if there IS no "YET" possible.

If that accurately reflects your position, could you please explain WHY you don't accept the YET conditional?

YOU sir, may be in YET denial.
MOST human embryos do NOT come to term.
They never made it.

NOT ALL HUMAN EMBRYOS BECOME CHILDREN.. that's jut the facts.

So, even though the egg came from TWO HUMANS, and the egg was FERTILIZED.. and it MIGHT have developed into a fully functional human person.. 25% of them just don't.

So, to say that they weren't children YET seems to apply when they are conceived.
They might have been children, but they weren't quite there YET.

So is that bad? Of course, it's bad.
We are all quite sad.

If we can change that we would. That's just human nature.

BUT we don't call nature bad because it causes abortions.
Natural reasons seem to be ok, but human reasons not.

Well, I'm saying that human reasons should be taken into consideration too.
I'm pro choice.. but if anyone gives me a compelling reason to change my mind.. I'll change my mind.

I'm LOOKING for that compelling reason .. and I haven't really found it yet.
I know, I know, off topic.. too personal.. ok.
Bad form.

Well, take an egg. And then, take a chicken. Look at the two. Can you see any differences? MOST people do. When I eat a fried egg, for example, I don't mistake it for a roasted breast of chicken....

Most consumed chicken eggs aren't fertilised, in any case.

That's NOT THE POINT... don't play obtuse.

I was asking you a question.
The QUESTION WAS...

"Well, take an egg. And then, take a chicken. Look at the two. Can you see any differences?"

Of course you see a difference.. I HOPE that you do.. otherwise YOU would be having a perception problem and we don't want any of THOSE.

But maybe you don't perceive any difference between an egg and a chicken.

But the issue ISN'T about someone killing me. It's about someone killing a potential human. This is apples and oranges again. You conflate the two terms ( human and potential human ) to make your point.

I'm questioning the underlying principle used by you and KenRU and a host of others: if there's no consensus, then let anyone do as they like. Which would fail miserably if it was consistently followed in other parts of life.

I think that's the way a democracy works.

But .. You have me there..
Maybe you can give me an example of where we don't have a consensus and we are told to do whatever it is we want concerning the issue.. and that's a miserable failure for us.

Right now, honestly, I can't think of any examples of that.

Let's say.. something trivial....

mmmmmmmm
What color to wear.. so.. if there is no consensus.. then we can just go ahead and wear any color we want.

Ok.. don't see a disastrous failure there.

Ok.. maybe you can come up with a good example, of someone else.. I'm coming up pretty empty on your idea.

I'm interested in it.
MAYBE you really got something there.. It's worth pursuing.

Have any initial thoughts about it that I can mull over?

[Blastcat]

An embryo is human and is a human.

Ok, stop that.
That's a ridiculously circular statement.

You would like to ARGUE that an embryo is a human.
So you STATE that it is.

You say that it's a human because it's a human.
STOP THAT.

Then you keep making the category error.

Allow me to demonstrate:

MY TOENAIL IS A HUMAN toenail.
It's not a human BEING , it's a human TOENAIL.
BEINGS AND TOENAILS are not the same.

That's a category error.

A human EMBRYO is a human embryo.
But an embryo is not a person.

NOT YET.

It's just got a lot of potential to be.
At the very least, it's got 75% potential to be.

BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY

Here is another category mistake that you are implying...

PARTS of something are not the WHOLE of something.

That's another category error.
A human embryo is a PART of the mother.. but isn't the MOTHER.. and it isn't a whole human BEING either. Where we draw the line between human embryo and a human being is debatable. There are PARTS of a human being that are NOT beings in and of themselves.

Like my TOENAILS...

GO GIT your categories in line, they are all over the place.

[acapiz]

Blastcat: BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY ..................GO GIT your categories in line, they are all over the place.

It appears to me that your accusation of using circular argument would be most appropriately assigned to yourself, Blastcat, and not to Paprika.

If we accept your premise that potentiality is not actuality then you surely see the absurdity of sacrificing me to save someone better tomorrow. I will not be the same person tomorrow. How and why did you decide on a line here. An embryo is a human in the very real way that my presence at primary school years ago has me writing to you now as a grandad. What if you had terminated me then, seeing as potentiality isn't actuality. An embryo is a person, just as much as a child is an adult.
IMHO

[Blastcat]

[Replying to post 311 by acapiz]

Blastcat: BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY ..................GO GIT your categories in line, they are all over the place.

It appears to me that your accusation of using circular argument would be most appropriately assigned to yourself, Blastcat, and not to Paprika.

If we accept your premise that potentiality is not actuality then you surely see the absurdity of sacrificing me to save someone better tomorrow.

I think what I was hoping for a good knock down argument, here.. started off well enough speaking about circular thinking I have to admit I got worried. Maybe I wasn't quite careful enough? .. but your reasoning here seems to be a bit of a non sequitur.

How you GET from potential not being actual to sacrificing you to save someone else later is ... amazing. Amazingly invisible.

That just doesn't follow. There is no mechanism to join the two ideas.
I'm disappointed.

It always amazes me that so many people don't seem to understand what a circular reason is.. but then I remember that I only learned what it is about 3 years ago when I took an online logic course.

One of these days, some logician will knock me out cold. But it didn't happen today, sorry to say. I learn by my mistakes, so even though I would be embarrassed by the comeuppance, I actually look forward to it. And I KNOW it's a cummin' in.

I think I tried to demonstrate what the circularity was.. maybe I didn't.
But I certainly didn't do any circular reasoning.. not by the way YOU describe it.

You aren't describing a circular bit of reasoning. You seem to be using the term in a general way to say that I'm not thinking well.

There is a difference.

I will not be the same person tomorrow.

And this relates to the category mistake of thinking that a potential person isn't an actual person HOW?

This is proves a circularity in my thinking, how?

IN any case, let's look at the words "potential" and "actual" to see if there is any difference between the two, shall we?

IS IT RAINING ON MY CAR YET?

A potential CAR isn't an actual car, it's a bunch of electronics, metal and plastic. It may even be a drawing , or a clay statue. Or a bunch of zeros and ones in a computer program These are all POTENTIAL CARS.. But we can't drive them YET.

A potential downpour isn't an actual downpour.

It may be a big dark cloud over the horizon, it may be a weather forecast, it may be a "feeling in my bones", it may be raining all over the world but here. But it's still not raining YET.

It's only going to BE an actual downpour of rain when it ACTUALLY does rain.


So, what about this potential person that you are going to be in a few minutes? What about that?

You are now already a person. in a few minutes, you will still be a person. This new potential person that you will transform into will be a person. And it transformed itself FROM a person. It didn't transform itself from anything ELSE than a person. Your PERSONHOOD never changed. And by personhood I mean that you never ceased to be a person .. a human being.



A pile of metal at a FORD factory isn't YET a FORD CAR.
Same thing with a pile of human CELLS.... not quite yet a human PERSON.

Does THAT help you git your categories straight?

How and why did you decide on a line here.

Do you mean the line between what is a potential human and what is an actual human?

WHAT LINE?

There is no "line".

We make UP a line... it's a FANTASY line.

It's the same kind of "line" we draw between CHILD and GROWN UP..
We make that line up too.

I said that it's debatable.
It's an matter of opinion.
You have your opinion about it.. and others have their opinion about it.

I never said that I knew where to draw the line..
I just have my own personal opinion on the matter.

It's a subjective decision.

I know that I have to make a distinction between, say, an egg and a chicken, or an embryo and a human being. but I would leave where to put that line to the experts.

And I think that even the experts are a little bit vague about the line.
But most of the world pretty much considers a human being starts at being BORN.

"Significantly, there is no support for fetuses as legal persons in international human rights codes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Virtually all national constitutions do not treat fetuses as persons or citizens. American citizenship is limited to those "born or naturalized in the United States" (as per the 14th Amendment) and the word "Everyone" in the Canadian constitution has been deemed by the courts not to include fetuses"

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canad ... rson.shtml

An embryo is a human in the very real way that my presence at primary school years ago has me writing to you now as a grandad.

No, it's not the same.
Category mistake.

A human child is a human being. A human adult is a human being. This is not in dispute anywhere on the planet.

But we are NOT talking about a human child or a human adult, we are talking about a human EMBRYO who is not YET a human person.

What if you had terminated me then, seeing as potentiality isn't actuality.

I was talking about a point of logic. One thing isn't the same as another thing. That's all.
One thing isn't the same as another.

Apples and Oranges, in other words, it's a quite simple point, but people get confused about it all the time, anyway.

I point it out when I see it.
Your making it now.

I would not have terminated YOU as a human person then..
Back then, YOU were a fetus with only the potential of being a person.

And at BEST the statistic show that you would have had 75% chance of making it out alive.

You would have never known the difference. You would not be complaining about it to me.
Some other person might have taken your place.

Maybe you find that upsetting. SO would I.
My mother told me that there was a very serious discussion about an abortion in my case. I would have never known if they had decided to get one.

Lucky for me.
Lucky for you.

Let's celebrate life!

An embryo is a person, just as much as a child is an adult

IMHO

Might be a typo. You wrote that a child is an adult.

Maybe you meant to say "a child is a person", instead.
Well, most of the world disagrees with your opinion.

But since this is pretty much a subjective issue.. as you say, where we draw the line, most rational people think that's it's best to leave that decision to the one who has to worry for or against having an actual abortion.

We don't want to force women to have babies just because they got pregnant anymore.
Times have changed.

You are a little behind the times.
Morality is like that, it changes and sometimes, it even improves.

It used to be seen as perfectly moral to own another person as property in the past, but not any longer.

It used to be seen as perfectly moral for men to tell women what to do when to do it , with whom, and what they could do with their bodies or not.

Those times have changed, too.

Women have human rights now.
Taking away this right to a decision about their own bodies would be taking away a very basic kind of a right.

Are you truly advocating that we should force women to carry unwanted babies to term?
Do you think that will stop abortions, or only push them underground like they used to in the good old days, grandad?

Because all that did was force women to have illegal abortions and dangerous ones at that. Women always had abortions one way or the other, in the past, and they always will want abortions.

Do you want to criminalize and endanger these women all around the world?

Well, these are fun issues to debate about.
I think you said it best when you said that all this was IMHO.
I have to agree.

We all have our opinions, don't we?

[dianaiad]

[Replying to post 311 by acapiz]

Blastcat: BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY ..................GO GIT your categories in line, they are all over the place.

It appears to me that your accusation of using circular argument would be most appropriately assigned to yourself, Blastcat, and not to Paprika.

If we accept your premise that potentiality is not actuality then you surely see the absurdity of sacrificing me to save someone better tomorrow.

I think what I was hoping for a good knock down argument, here.. started off well enough speaking about circular thinking I have to admit I got worried. Maybe I wasn't quite careful enough? .. but your reasoning here seems to be a bit of a non sequitur.

May I butt in here?

I have often thought that the argument for the acceptability of abortion because 'a potential human is not a human' is circular. I've never been able to express it clearly.

Let me try this again.

There's an old 'joke' of sorts that well illustrates the problem with it; the guy who is on trial for killing his parents asking for mercy from the court on account of his being an orphan.

The problem with 'potential human' not being the same thing as an 'actual human,' is that it is a dichotomy. It isn't a potential ANYTHING ELSE.

There are only two choices here; this embryo becomes a human adult...or it dies first.

It has no potential to take any other course than those two things. Therefore, the reason for ending its life is to prevent it from becoming a human adult, or child, or infant. That's the whole idea.

It seems to me that if only death will prevent an embryo from reaching the next stage of its development as a human...embryo, fetus, infant, child, adolescent, adult....then it's already a human. After all, i has no potential to become an elephant. Adulthood...or death. Therefore if it is morally wrong to kill a child BECAUSE it is only a 'potential adult,' then it is equally wrong to kill a fetus BECAUSE it is only a 'potential adult.' It is already human.

There may well be other reasons for ending the life of a fetus. Some of them, though tragic, are necessary. But to use THIS one...that it is only 'potentially' a human?

No. It's not 'potentially' human. It is human. It's nothing else; it's human, or it's dead.

[Zzyzx]

.

No. It's not 'potentially' human. It is human. It's nothing else; it's human, or it's dead.

Does this apply to frozen embryos that are "surplus" in IVF programs?

Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of embryos have accumulated in fertility clinics throughout the country . . .
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/ex ... index.html

Are those humans? If they are destroyed (killed?) how is that different from destroying any other embryo?

[dianaiad]

.

No. It's not 'potentially' human. It is human. It's nothing else; it's human, or it's dead.

Does this apply to frozen embryos that are "surplus" in IVF programs?

Yep.

Experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of embryos have accumulated in fertility clinics throughout the country . . .
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/ex ... index.html

Are those humans? If they are destroyed (killed?) how is that different from destroying any other embryo?

It's not.

[Paprika]

Well, Z isn't saying that embryos AREN'T living.. he is AGREEING that they are living ( FTSOTA )

But it seems to me that Z would like to put the debate on whether or not embryos are living or not aside for the moment, in order to come back to it later,

Thank you; we are in the process of clearing it up. At the moment, I gather he somehow wants to maintain that they are both living AND 'potential life' in contrast to 'actual' or 'existing' life.

perhaps, in another discussion, perhaps about the meaning of the word "living".

Please don't tell me you want to go down that semantic rabbithole. While the status of 'living' is debatable with respect to certain things (eg viruses), embryos and feti are clearly living and not anywhere close to the grey area.

Just to make sure. do we agree that.
So, anything with DNA might not be a human PERSON, that therefore if we kill some humans cells that does NOT mean we are murdering a human PERSON.

Are we on the same page here?

Yep.

OK, good.. I anticipate too often.. A problem with my writing style.. working on it.

NOT every bunch of cells is a human being.
SOME bunches of cells are what we call a human being.

The question is about what bunch of cells are human beings and what are not yet human beings.

Got it.

No category mistake there.

I appreciate this.

Human CELLS are human.
What do you MEAN by offspring. that it COMES from humans?

I looked up the def of "offspring".. yeah. pretty much means child, son, daughter.. that kind of thing.. not really embryo or fetus or that other kind of thing.

But to me, child, offspring means the same thing.
What is the distinction I'm missing here?

Why is this offspringy thing so important to the debate?

Because people want to maintain some value distinction between killing children of some stages of physical maturity and others of later stages (eg some would maintain the pre-birth and post-birth distinction, while others prefer a pre-third trimester and post-third trimester line, yer others a pre-X-week and others a post-X-week separation)

I suppose that you mean that a human fertilized egg is a child, whereas, I only see a fertilized egg as a potential child, and not YET a child. To become a human BEING means more to me than a fertilized egg. When I look at an egg, I don't see a child.

It's not a "problem" with my perception at all.. I could say the same thing about your perception.

You could say the same thing, but it still remains a problem with your perception.

The point is that we have DIFFERENT CONCLUSIONS given the same perceptions.
It's not about PERCEPTION, it's about a judgement on personhood.

You don't see a human person, and I don't see an egg.
We see a bunch of cells and you CALL that a person and I CALL that an egg.

No, the concept of 'personhood' doesn't come into my argument at all. All that is required is that the embryo is human (adjective) because of its DNA and that it is an organism of its own, therefore it is a human.

Let me take a hundred people.. show them the picture of an egg... are they going to call it a CHICKEN or a freaking EGG.. what do YOU think they are going to say?

You seem to be having a semantic problem.

What the common people says hardly matters unless truth is a matter of democratic vote; the biologist would say that the fertilised egg is a member of the species.

Do you think that all fertilized eggs are the animals that produced the eggs? There is no difference between an egg and a chicken or an egg and a snake or an egg and a duck billed platypus, or an egg and and an ostrich?

Yep, but they aren't at the same level of development. You might want to CALL them members, but that is your opinion. Other people have the opinion that they are not members YET.

Some are not YET fully chickens, and some are.
If I steped on a chrysalid, would you say that a butterfly dies or a chrysalid died?

Doesn't matter to you.. no distinction between the two states?
You only see one state.. Butterfly ?[/quote]
Stop your silly nonsense about "no distinction between the two states". I have on multiple occasions acknowledged that there is distinction in physical maturity (just as there is a difference in physical maturity between human adult and human toddler), so let's cut through your silly semantic nonsense:

They are of the same species (just as a human adult and a human toddler are of the same species) and it is wrong to kill a human adult just as it is wrong to kill a human toddler, ceteris paribus.

The rest are mere repetitions and I would give the same response, so for the sake of brevity I omit it.

[Paprika]

An embryo is human and is a human.

Ok, stop that.
That's a ridiculously circular statement.

You would like to ARGUE that an embryo is a human.
So you STATE that it is.

You say that it's a human because it's a human.
STOP THAT.

Then you keep making the category error.

Allow me to demonstrate:

MY TOENAIL IS A HUMAN toenail.
It's not a human BEING , it's a human TOENAIL.
BEINGS AND TOENAILS are not the same.

That's a category error.

A human EMBRYO is a human embryo.
But an embryo is not a person.

NOT YET.

It's just got a lot of potential to be.
At the very least, it's got 75% potential to be.

BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY

Here is another category mistake that you are implying...

You're doing jumping again.

Here's the argument:
1) The embryo is living
2) The embryo is human (adj, as opposed to leonine or serpentine) by its DNA
3) The embryo is an organism of its own (and not say like a muscle cell in my heart which is not)
C) Biologically, the embryo is a member of the human species
C) The embryo is a human (noun)

Corollary) As the embryo is a human and whose DNA is directly derived from a male and a female human, the embryo is the child of the male and female, and they are the embryo's father and mother, respectively.

'Personhood' or the concept of 'person' (which is primarily a legal distinction to justify differential treatment of certain groups) doesn't come into the argument at all, for the argument is entirely biological.

[Paprika]

Blastcat: BUT POTENTIALITY isn't ACTUALITY ..................GO GIT your categories in line, they are all over the place.

It appears to me that your accusation of using circular argument would be most appropriately assigned to yourself, Blastcat, and not to Paprika.

Heh.

If we accept your premise that potentiality is not actuality

Potentiality has not been used in my argument at all. I believe Blastcat is perhaps all too familiar with weak arguments and therefore assumes that I am using them.

So let's get this straight once and for all, Blastcat:
1) My argument here does not depend on 'potentiality' or 'actuality'
2) Neither does it depend on 'personhood' or 'person'

Deal with it as it stands, or clarify if you think it's ambiguous, instead of assuming it's like other arguments you've seen, claiming it is, claiming that therefore it falls into whatever logical error those other arguments fall under and declaring victory.

This kind of jumping to conclusion was amusing at first but it's fast getting tiring.