The living human cells in the poop (probably a few thousand) are all 'human life'. Human life is human life. What makes it special isn't that it is human in origin, or that it is life, but that it has a brain.
I can't fathom why you keep referring to varying kinds of biological matter as "human life". You are just misusing words. "Life" is defined as a life form, a living thing. None of these are living things (other than, according to the argument, an embryo). I just don't know what you're getting at mangling language like this. Why not just say "these are all kinds of bio matter". It would be more clear, and have the virtue of being easy to understand.
The pattern differences are trivial, in nearlly all cases, they can be taken and transformed into a person given the right environment.
This seems to be the centerpiece of your argument at the moment: that given certain genetic or biochemical manipulations, it could be possible to take non-gamete cells and create life out of them. Well let's grant that - in that case the life-begins-at-conception argument would have to include the inception of that new proto-life becoming viable after whatever artificial processes are done to it. By telling me that we can mechanically mess with nature to turn one thing into another doesn't mean they're all the same, it just means we may be capable, in Frankensteinian glory, to create that which was previously found in nature alone. Well ok, that's not saying much. Eventually we'll be able to take raw atomic matter and pile it together into any substance we want, perhaps including viable embryonic cells. That's fine, but it doesn't mean a thing about hydrogen and electrons being basically the same as an embryo in utero. Unless you just mean to say that anything made from any atomic material is basically all the same - atomic soup - in which case you are already bowing out of the argument because the pro-lifers would deny this as a first principle. If this is what you mean it would be more honest to just say you don't believe that fundamentally human life different from a pile of rocks, even though they are patterned differently. One can accept that premise, while disagreeing with it, and walk away. There's no need to act as if you're debating conclusions when in fact you're debating first principles. That is why a reductionist appeal to 'biology' is a waste of time in this case - one needs to look at philosophy.
An embryo 'lacks the pattern' to develop into a person. It requires specific inputs from the environment to do so. If you place an embryo into a nutrient broth it can't develop into a person.
By this same argument
you lack the pattern to conduct any of the processes that normally constitute the make-do definition of life used by biologists. You could nether locomote, nor reproduce, nor eat, nor even think without constant specific inputs from the environment. Your argument here is a reduction to absurdity. Listing the preconditions for development and survival as proof it can't do it by itself is simply redundant; we can't do anything by ourselves ever.
If in the first place you define personhood as merely a legal fiction then we are definitely not talking about the same thing.
The legal meaning and moral meaning should be quite similar.
You keep making these sweeping moral pronouncements, like as if you had it handed to you from Mount Sinai. How can you possibly know this is true? I could see you positing an argument where you think it might be true, or you'd like to explore if it might be true; but since you cannot claim a concrete knowledge of the moral meaning - indeed, you essentially deny that such a thing exists - your ability to compare it to the state of law is effectively zero.
You've now shifted to 'human life that has a pattern of the embryo'
It's starting to sound like you're just not listening, since I have very explicitly said that "human life" is a totally inappropriate way to call a cheek swab or cancer cell. So please avoid telling me that I've 'shifted to' a definition I literally said makes no sense. Regarding the use of the term "pattern" I used it in order to say that differentiating between different sorts of biological matter would have to be done based on how it's patterned. In fact this isn't my opinion, so to speak, but is in fact the essential foundation of how language is used. You
literally need to have different classifications for things that are different, and these are based on pattern. A table is different from a bench not just because of how they're used, but how they're put together. And a wooden spoon is different from a table for multiple reasons involving its function and pattern, even though both are really made of the same material and in theory you could make a spoon out of the table. If you want to start saying that spoons and tables are
morally the same that's fine, but I have no idea why you'd reject the idea that the 'pattern' of a thing is what we need to look at to examine what it is. The basic atomic components are clearly not enough.
It is a similar area of discussion to natural law, and insofar as the pro-life side posits that this property exists whether you agree or not, we are talking about something that is essentially a fact of nature, not a convention come to by agreement.
It isn't a 'fact of nature' that embryos are persons.
I'm not telling you that it's a fact of nature, I'm telling you that the argument of the pro-life side is that it's a fact of nature. Now it either is or is not a fact of nature, but I can assure you with 100% confidence that
you do not know whether it is a fact of nature or not. We don't have the means to empirically verify that kind of thing, if we ever will.
So the axioms of 'natural law' can be different. A womans control over her body will be to some a 'natural law'. Not harming 'thinking beings' might be another axiom. There are numerous potential axioms, but 'embryos are persons' doesn't seem a particularly 'natural' nor intuitive 'natural law' and it is one contrary to millennia of natural philosophy (of course that can change - such as our views on slavery) and to religious texts including the Bible.
No, that doesn't sound right. If one (anyone) believes in natural law then what they are submitting is that there is an innate system in place that exists whether or not they are aware of it or agree with it. You are right that people could potentially disagree about what the facts are in regard to natural law, but you are wrong that one person's opinion could be as good as another's. All that would mean is that some people are correct and others are incorrect. Insofar as we are prone to error, though, I agree that people could be mistaken about what is contained in natural law. Aquinas, for instance, could be totally wrong and it could contain other things than what he thought. But if there is natural law then there is one set of correct facts about it, and no others, and the moral realists would seek to know what these rules are and how to accord themselves to them. But since I suspect you do not believe in natural law the point is moot, right? You don't think there are innate moral rules to which we must accord ourselves once we discover them. So why go on about there being many potential versions of natural law?
I think science gives some pretty strong evidence that embryos aren't particularly special.
I have personally never heard anyone make this claim. I
have heard scientists say things that could be done biologically, and I've heard numerous arguments about how (obviously) aborting an embryo is no big deal. But I've never heard anyone say they're 'nothing special.' I don't even know what such a value judgement could have to do with science. It would be like saying "science says that stars are nothing special." Really, in whose opinion? Astrophysics probably think stars are totally amazing, even though there are maybe trillions of them in the universe. What on earth is "special" supposed to mean anyhow? I think you need to be careful about making value judgements and calling them "science." That's just an appeal to a false authority.
Rights are impossible to be innate. They are either created by humans or by 'God' if you prefer. They can be derived from game theoretic considerations; or reciprocity; or derived from considerations of how we respond empathically or via other instinctual emotions (fairness, outrage, etc.).
You just need to know that you are like 100 years out of date in this opinion. Plenty of non-theists talk about moral realism, and there is no need to talk about God to talk about where morality is a "real thing" that exists outside of our own opinions. Options do include God, obviously, and human convention, but there are many other possibilities as well. Saying that it is "impossible" that such rights are innate is taking an unsupported position in moral theory and pronouncing it as an obvious fact. Are you aware of how sweeping and dismissive a comment this is? And just how much study would be required for you to say it and know what was needed in order to back it up? And let me tell you, *a lot* would be needed to back it up. For argument's sake, let's just assume you've done those years of work, study, and writing and that you really do have this as your working theory of moral philosophy: is it even decent to drop such a line without indicating that it's no small thing and that you've labored for 20 years to come to this realization?
Overall I should stress that I was not putting forward an argument that the personhood begins at conception idea is definitely right.
Didn't you just suggest that was an axiom of 'natural law'??
No, I didn't. I said that innate morality is akin to natural law in that both are about existential facts that are true regardless of whether anyone agrees with them. I did not say that the personhood-at-conception position was a necessary component of natural law; in fact I didn't even say that the pro-life position itself is a necessary component of natural law. What I said was that natural law is about
what is, not about what we agree upon; and likewise with the personhood argument. Now probably there would be a strong alignment between people who believe in personhood at conception, and those who believe in natural law, but I don't know that this alignment is necessary. Also it's worth noting that probably far fewer people
know of natural law on a conceptual level, compared to those who know of the personhood at conception idea, so at minimum if you took a poll there would probably be a significant disparity of people who claim to believe each on a conscious level.
Recognizing that morals are either created by humans (and possibly other beings such as God or aliens) I think is critical. There seems to be no rational basis for thinking that they exist outside of an agreed upon framework or recognizing that groups of intelligent beings can find different arguements compelling for which ones should be adopted.
See, I know this is your position, which is fair, but what keeps making me do double takes is how confident you can be that you're right. I mean, you do know that people (really, really REALLY smart people) spend their whole careers investigating these matters, and would never - for fear of being laughed out of their profession - make the kind of certain assertion that you're doing here by saying there is no rational basis for it. Let's take a historic figure as an example of what it would take to investigate whether there's a rational basis for it. Take Socrates, whose program of talking to as many people possible about the important things was a program of investigation into not only peoples' beliefs, but whether they really believed what they said they did, and whether there was something deeper down below it that was really behind their actions. To ask whether there's a common morality beyond the mores of the marketplace requires finding some way to determine whether there are moral structures in place that are common to people
even when they are not aware of them. This was his method, and of course he did not come to a solution or endpoint. His repeated mantra was that he knew nothing, because what he did know was how feeble and often contradictory peoples'
stated beliefs were. So he needed to see if they had unstated beliefs (even those outside of one's conscious awareness) that really had an impact on their worldview. And aside from the fact that his method has been hailed for all time as being wise, there is the fact that it's not entirely clear
how else one would go about it. Doing brain scans while interviewing people might be the modern equivalent, but the biology alone is not enough: the study must be coupled with perception of the living process. And this is no small matter - indeed we are still practically nowhere with it on an empirical level. So I cannot see how you are so confident that you just have the answers to it all.