appolose said:
I think perhaps the question could be better answered if we defined what exactly we meant by "life", so we could better answer when it begins. Someone up above said that perhaps it is when self-awareness arises. However, one is not self-aware if one is, for example, asleep (sure, you could be when your dreaming, but not otherwise). So we'd be forced to conclude that it wouldn't really be killing to cut off a sleeping man's head. Now, since we won't agree to that consequence, we'll have to use some other definition. If an entity can support itself, for instance, outside the womb, and thus has life, then any instance of of the body being unable to support itself would be disqualified as living, such as simply being on dialysis. Again, we won't agree to that definition because of that.
Now, one might argue that a person could wake up from his sleep, or be granted a kidney transplant, and thus has the potential to be self-aware and self-sustaining, and define life that way, so we could conclude that the two above cases are indeed living beings. That would grant to the moment of conception such potential too, and thus one would have to conclude it too is living. However,
Unfortunately, the definition I have for human life is going to be whenever the "spirit" enters (er, sorry for the religous answer); when exactly that is I would have to conclude it would be before the moment of conciousness, per the above reasons, and since it would seem somewhat arbitrary (if nothing else) for it to enter just any time before that, I will have to conclude at conception. Also, I want to be on the cautious side.
|
