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I think there’s conceptual confusion here too, @ConceptualJames. I agree with sentences 2-4, but sentence 1 seems to conflate actuality with existence, but isn’t right. It’s the error of the Megarians, and has all the absurd consequences Aristotle shows of denying potentiality.
@ConceptualJames If the primary pro-choice argument can be made out cogently (I don’t think it can), wouldn’t the living human being that isn’t yet a person be precisely a “potential person”?
I don’t think it is, but the concept doesn’t seem incoherent.
I don’t think it is, but the concept doesn’t seem incoherent.
@ConceptualJames Couldn’t a human sperm and ovum taken together be regarded as a “potential person” (assuming a conceptus is an actual person)?
If a conceptus is an actual person, and becomes so at the moment of fertilization, isn’t there *something* that pre-exists it that has the potentiality?
If a conceptus is an actual person, and becomes so at the moment of fertilization, isn’t there *something* that pre-exists it that has the potentiality?
@ConceptualJames This seems sound to me:
1 There are actual persons
2 Some of these actual persons came into being
3 ∴ there must have been something pre-existing that was actualized as a person
4 Whatever that was, was a potential person.
5 So there must be potential persons.
1 There are actual persons
2 Some of these actual persons came into being
3 ∴ there must have been something pre-existing that was actualized as a person
4 Whatever that was, was a potential person.
5 So there must be potential persons.
