Damschen Gregor, Gómez-Lobo Alfonso, Schönecker Dieter
University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle, Germany.
J Med Philos. 2006 Apr;31(2):165-75. doi: 10.1080/03605310600588707.
When does a human being begin to exist? Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard have argued that it is possible, through a combination of biological fact and philosophical analysis, to provide a definitive answer to this question. In their view, a human individual begins to exist at gastrulation, i. e. at about sixteen days after fertilization. In this paper we argue that even granting Smith and Brogaard's ontological commitments and biological assumptions, the existence of a human being can be shown to begin much earlier, viz., with fertilization. Their interpretative claim that a zygote divides immediately into two substances and therefore ceases to exist is highly implausible by their own standards, and their factual claim that there is no communication between the blastomeres has to be abandoned in light of recent embryological research.
人类何时开始存在？巴里·史密斯和贝丽特·布罗加德认为，通过结合生物学事实与哲学分析，有可能为这个问题提供一个明确的答案。在他们看来，一个人类个体在原肠胚形成时开始存在，即受精后约十六天。在本文中，我们认为，即使承认史密斯和布罗加德的本体论承诺和生物学假设，也可以证明人类的存在要早得多，即从受精时就开始了。他们关于受精卵立即分裂成两种物质并因此不再存在的解释性主张，按照他们自己的标准来看是极不合理的，而且鉴于最近的胚胎学研究，他们关于卵裂球之间没有通讯的事实性主张也必须放弃。
