No, a skin cell has DNA and is alive. That doesn’t make it a person. A fetus is just a thing.
And neither does a person in a coma.
But there is near-universal agreement that a person in a coma has not lost his status as a human being, a person worthy of protection of the law. So your definition is unworkable.
Why is that? I can’t prove Uncle Steve is a person because he’s in a coma, so along comes Diogenes with a mercy pillow?
Argue with the dictionary, not me. You’re the one who said any dictionary definition will do. I gave you a dictionary definition.
Do you want to move the goal posts, or do you want to simply recognize the fact that we can easily modify that definition to exclude skin cells and anything similar?
And this is why I said that arguing definitions is pointless.
I might well add “repetitive to the point of absurdity” to that.
Let me revisit this, because I didn’t notice it originally. You are claiming, as part of that definition that a fetus is a “thing”. Now, clearly that definition, which does use the word “thing”, is using that word to mean something that is not alive. You are claiming that fetus is not alive, which is, to use a technical term, bullshit.
I think we have now established that “any dictionary definition” will not work. It’s just your way of dodging the fact that there is no objective way to define a human life. There are many different ways, depending on the assumptions you make. In fact, I can think of definitions that would exclude live babies up to a certain age.
I would also note that if you and I were to come up with our own definitions, I believe those definitions would be virtually identical. The only difference between you and me on this matter is your refusal to accept that other people, starting with different assumptions, are going to come up with other, equally valid, definitions.
This is a fallacious leap. If I were to grant that people in comas are not sentient (which I don’t because they do have brain activity), it still would not follow that I therefore want to smother them with pillows. I am pro-choice on the issue.
A comatose person is someone who has been born, living “sentiently” and most likely “sapiently” until a trauma occurred, causing the person to temporarily lose consciousness (weeks, rarely months), unless the damage is permanent. Like a sleeping or anesthetized person, the person is only taking a short vacation from sentience. Also, there may be some marginal sentience depending on the coma grade (certain brain activity present) just like the depth of sleep. Sleeping people are typically still considered to be sentient beings because they have the capability of sentience. Likewise for the non-permanent comatose patient. People in a coma are also independent of of a uterus.
Now, a brain dead patient or one in a persistent vegetative state is no longer sentient and never will be sentient again. The patient has shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile. This is an ex-person.
In development, you got your zygote which is simply a single cell, an embryo which is a cluster of cells or the beginning of tissue or a pre-third trimester (maybe late 2nd) fetus. These do not have anything present to be able to be sentient. There’s no temporary vacation from sentience. No sentient being. It’s not stunned. It’s not pinin’ for the fjords. It’s a person that never was! (At least not persony enough to outlaw abortion, IMO.)
No, I’m claiming being alive doesn’t make it a person. Sperm cells are “things” that are alive and are not persons.
All of this still avoids the fact that I’m not the one with the burden of proof, by the way.
Yes you are. You are asserting that there is only one valid definition of “person”. Prove it.
I’m saying you are taking an axiom and asserting that it has truth value. There are different axioms that we can start from to arrive at different truths. Yours is not objectively true.
Any dictionary definition is perfectly adequate to exclude a clump of insentient tissue. If you want to assert a magical belief that a clump of tissue is a “baby,” then prove it. I don’t have to prove it’s not a person any more than I have to prove a rock is not a person. It goes without saying.
Can you quote the post where I asked you to prove a negative?
Every post where you try to demand proof that a fetus is not a person.
OK, you can’t. I figured as much, because I never asked (much less demanded) you to prove a fetus isn’t a person.
I have no idea what you’re asking for then. “Fetus” does not meet any simple dictionary definition of fetus. That’s all there is to it.
You have no idea what I’m asking when I’ve posted it half a dozen times? Then you have no idea because you don’t want to have any idea.
I gave you a “simple” dictionary definition and you rejected it.
I didn’t reject the dictionary definition. I reject that the dictionary definition could possibly apply to a clump of insentient tissue.
Ah, the “clump of tissue” red herring. You still that that works?
It’s still ridiculous to call it a person.
Depending on the axioms you start with, yes. Or no.