Is a Zygote a Person?

Conceptual Confusion
We realize most human values by using concepts that don't meet the classical denition
of "singly necessary and jointly sufcient." We realize both the lesser and higher goods of
life, for example, when using cluster, vague, fuzzy and/or pluralistic concepts, in addition
to those that have been more classically dened.
Our concepts will ordinarily be more vs less clustered vs simple, vague vs precise, fuzzy
vs discreet, pluralistic vs singular, objective vs subjective, arbitrary vs nonarbitrary,
adequate vs inadequate, even reasonable or absurd ...
as they, more or less, robustly describe vs merely reference realities that present ...
in varying degrees of continuity and discontinuity, regularity and irregularity, pattern and
paradox, necessity and chance, symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, determinacy
and indeterminacy, event and process.
However one conceives a moral ontology, because our epistemology remains ineluctably
fallibilist, epistemic virtue requires an holistic (contemplative) approach ...
which will include not just objective aspects, which are ...
empirical (descriptive) ...
logical, ethical and prudential (all normative), but also ...
subjective aspects, which include hedonic, aesthetic and moral dispositions (all
evaluative), as well as, importantly ...
intersubjective relational realities (interpretive).
Subjective aspects, then, not only need not rob our concepts of epistemic virtue, but,
instead, can enhance their modeling power of reality, as they draw on our collective ...
moral instincts, ethical intuitions, aesthetic sensibilities, hedonic inclinations, visceral
reactions, in other words ...
our common sensibilities ...
therebybetter reecting our legitimate ultimate concerns.
Our more informal objective aspects needn't rob our concepts of epistemic virtue, either,
but can also enhance our modeling power of reality, as they draw on our ...

abductive instincts, intuitions and inferences and ...

inductive experiences, in other words ...
our common sense ...
thereby protecting us from radical empiricisms, rationalisms and gnosticisms (all silly
formalisms), which devolve into paradoxes that cannot be
dissolved paradigmatically,
resolved dialectically or
exploited via creative tensions, but must otherwise simply be

evaded, practically, via reductio ad absurdum.

This is to recognize, for example, that whatever epistemic virtues one argues might
accrue to classically dening a zygote as a human person, such as, for example,
empirical objectivity, rational deduction, conceptual precision, ethical clarity and
prudential simplicity, such a denition remains ...
woefully decient vis a vis humanity's common sense and
seriously impoverished vis a vis humanity's common sensibilities.
This is all because complex human realities --- like cause, species, person, life and death
--- require the use of cluster, pluralistic, vague and fuzzy concepts --- not because our
moral ontology doesn't enjoy objective foundations (e.g. vis a vis a theory of truth), but --because our moral theorizing remains unavoidably fallibilist, probabilistic and
incomplete (e.g. vis a vis a theory of knowledge) but, nevertheless and happily, largely
adequate.
Any doubt about a zygote's personhood, by the way, contrary to rationalistic accounts, is
not a determinable empirical or factual doubt, which would preclude a moral probabilism
for such a matter as life or death, but is a theoretic or interpretive doubt (explanatory in
nature, metaphysically indeterminable), hence a doubt of law, which precisely warrants a
moral probabilism, including a right to dissent from an authoritative teaching (whether
intrinsically via compelling argument or extrinsically via reliance on experts).

cluster concept, pluralistic concept, vague concept, axiological epistemology, evaluative

dispositions, moral probabilism, personhood, ethical intuitions, moral instincts, aesthetic
sensibilities, hedonic inclinations, abductive inference, abductive instinct, human life,
human death, common sense, common sensibilities, right to dissent, modeling power,
epistemic virtue