To that, I will flatly call you either a liar, or insane. No one in their right mind would accept philosophical musings to be entered into evidence against them if their lives were on the line. Certainly no legal council would allow it.
You are referring to the question, "Would you accept an argument of this nature against you in a court of law if your life were in the balance?" I said yes because I was referring to the hard definition of non-sentience that I am using. There is no ambiguity in that definition.
I think you lost track of the line of thinking. The definition of "non-sentience" that I gave is a measure of some minimal amount of neurons, let's say 10,000 (or zero if you want). I claim that no embryo prior to the gastrulation phase (thanks Dr. Who) can have sentience under that definition. That is a hard measurable number.
Your mistake probably lies in thinking in terms of a lack of an ability to clearly define sentience. For your rejoinder, try to remember that I am using my definition of non-sentience when I refer to that topic. That would save a bit of time. The following is an example of how a well defined law that involves a hard measurable number might affect me and how I would react.
Suppose I had an blood alcohol level of 2.0% and ran a car into a crowd and killed 3 people. In my state that would be considered a very serious felony. I forgot what they call it, but it has a very long sentence because my alcohol level was above the legal limit 0.8%, and I was therefore DUI while killing people. There is no point in arguing that in court. I know that challenging that 0.8% number as being too low would be futile. The DUI alcohol level is a number that gives a hard definition to the gray area of drunkenness. That law is robust. That explains my answer "yes" to your question about accepting the law.
You have yet to prove that sentience is what makes a human being a human being
Great. It looks like we are getting somewhere. A previous go-around was defining sentience (or rather non-sentience). Now we are into the question applying it to the theme in question.
A lot of the rest of your post revolves around this fundamental question so I won't address any redundancies. Let's go back to your original criteria,
(Palerider) My case depends upon 3 points.
1. Unborns at any stage of development are living human beings.
2. Human beings have a right to live.
3. The right to live takes precedence over any other right that may be invoked so long as one doesn't represent an imminent threat to another's life.
There are a number of further arguments that can be presented to address your objections. Your list of three points have not been justified nor proven to be a priori. I can understand where there is difficulty modifying a definition, but there is leeway in defining axioms of a system as long as there is no self-inconsistency. That is what I will do, redefine the axioms.
Lets substitute for point 2 the following:
2. Each human being has a right to live unless said human is proven to be non-sentient.
Your previous objection was that you wanted me to prove that sentience was necessary for humanness. I am not claiming that here. I am attaching a condition on the "requirement to live" part of point 2. It is not a modifier that demands that sentience is always a property of humanness. Therefore, you can have an unqualified concept of human, and the modifier does not guarantee that right when is no nervous system.
Or another argument involves altering point 3.
In your wording of point 3, a lawyer would say that the word "one" lacks precedence. That is, what does "one" refer to? "Right to live" is the subject phrase, but it is a concept, not an object, and that can't be referenced by pronoun "one" in any straightforward way.
Axioms should at least be syntactically be correct. Let me reword that, and you can correct me if I am wrong. I will also add another qualifying phrase.
3. A human's right to live takes precedence over any other right that may be invoked so long as said human doesn't represent an imminent threat to another's life and/or unless said human is proven to be non-sentient.
I am afraid that I don't know what you are getting at here. Elaborate.
You posted "This isn't an abstract problem subject to sociological examinations." and I agreed, and I further clarified how my view was not abstract.
But you have thus far not made any headway at all at proving that we are not human beings until we have a functioning nervous system.
Oops. Please try to remember that I am not making that claim, but using the contrapositive. I am claiming that if we don't have some specific minimal nervous system, we are not sentient humans.
You have answered, but not advanced your argument even a nanometer.
I wouldn't say that. I think we are making great progress, perhaps maybe even a centimeter.
