Law School Discussion

Congrats! I just heard from them today as well.

Why do people think its harder to get a good GPA at places like Mcgill or U of Toronto?  Numbers show that its completely the opposite.

Matt

Average grades are pretty similar across the board at Canadian schools. Mcgill has the highest caliber of students. There is a huge gap in average entering grades from high school between Mcgill and Trent.

Sperm and Eggs are gametes, they're not even human beings

That's like saying a nail has the potential to be a chair, so we should treat it like a chair (i.e. you use it to nail pieces of wood together to make a chair)

Well, know what happens when you follow that line of reasoning? ... you have one pretty embarassing story to tell at parties.


So.. don't treat sperm and eggs as conscious human beings, because they're not even human beings in the first place.  Even a dead skin cell is more of a human being than a sperm or an egg.

The also obviously don't have one of the things modern science (biology, psychiatry) believes to be necessary for consciousness: a BRAIN.  Incidentally, an unborn baby has a central nervous system (including a brain) by the end of the first month of life before birth.

Your nail analogy perfectly illustrates what giffy was saying. A brain is necessary to have consciousness, yes, but it is clearly not sufficent. A fetus has the potentialto have consciousness, but that doesn't mean that we should treat it like a conscious being in every case (see the nail analogy).

Quote from: timma21 on December 15, 2004, 02:48:02 AM

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The question is whether a fetus is a conscious human life.

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so "killing" someone who is unconscious wouldnt really be murder?

Disanalagous. A fetus has never been self-conscious and has never had a concept of existing over time, much like an animal who is not self-conscious. An unconscious person has had a desire to continue living at some point, and killing them would be thwarting those interests.

not sure what this means you felt about other points. 

anyway, it is comparable.  you say the difference is that a fetus in the past was never conscious (you added term self, if that makes a difference i dont know, but the quote i referred to never had that term there) while the person now was concious at some previous point.  the past doesnt matter here.  when a person is dead, does it matter that they were previously alive? (now this is slightly different, granted, but the point about the past being irrelavent makes it a fair comparison). 

what matters is the present, and perhaps the future.  in the future, in many instances, the fetus has a far greater (or at least roughly equal) chance of "gaining conciousness" to that of the person.

again, i'm simply saying the point made i quoted implied something i imagine the poster (nor you) would not agree with.

No problem with the other points, they were very well reasoned and I agree with them completely. I didn't make the original comments that you refuted so I didn't comment on the rest of them.

Self-conscious/conscious, the idea was one of self-awareness and adding self wasn't really necessary on my part, just seemed clearer.

"when a person is dead, does it matter that they were previously alive?"
Yes, if you killed them. Killing a person who has an interest in continuing to live is wrong. Whether they have an interest or not in living is what is important. How does a fetus have this interest?

Your argument about the past/future doesn't seem to make sense. You can't equate killing an unonscious person with killing a fetus that has never been conscious, just like killing a fetus =/= killing a blade of grass. Saying that in the future the fetus might become conscious (or even assuredly will) does not imply that they have any interest in continuing to live presently. Neither of us want to be killed in our sleep/unconscious state, but it wouldn't make sense for us to say that we didn't want to be killed before we were self-conscious; this sort of retrospective analysis doesn't apply.

Legally though the constitution gives protection to born persons per the 14th amendment meaning that once born a person is accorded rights.

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Morally though I do see your point. However we have to draw a line somewere and plus, once bor,n the child no longer resides in the wonans body meaning that the rights of the women no longer apply.

Yup, I agree.