Quote:
Originally Posted by The Batlord
Well the point isn't "life" or "cells" (or at least it shouldn't be to anyone who has any useful understanding of what constitutes life), it's consciousness, and the level of consciousness that qualifies as worthy of protection. "Consciousness" itself is a nebulous concept that's based on many different emergent biological processes, and at what level it should be protected is probably just as nebulous, so trying to come up with any kind of hard-and-fast rules concerning it is pretty much impossible. But again, we're dealing with legal issues, which are binary, yes or no, legal or illegal questions, so at some point, you do have to make distinctions that are, at least to some extent, arbitrary. It is what it is.
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that's true. but it's not a scientific distinction we're making, it's just a judgement call. like the age of consent.
edit - also, i think it's a little trickier than consciousness vs non-consciousness. essentially it is human life we're really concerned about, you're just saying you think consciousness is the point at which a human life earns protection. we have no problem slaughtering animals that are just as conscious as any human baby.