Day of Infamy
Never take three exams on the same day. None of them will go well, and it will just put you in a foul mood. And by the way, Pearl Harbor apparently has become a proper subject for humor. After the first test, which was harder than the practice problems despite the professor's intent otherwise, I said to him, "You sunk my battleship." I got laughs...AARGH

Aristotelians Run Amok

Saletan, I think, doesn't quite get this right . The particular bioethical doctrines of Roman Catholicism that normally apply here contradict Aristotelian or Thomist norms. The currently ascendant post-Thomistic view is that there is no body-soul dualism, hence you cannot say that an embryo after conception is organized first by a vegetative soul, then by an animal soul, and then by a rational (or human) soul at some later time. The Roman Catholic view, as I understand it, is that the embryo is ensouled eo instante at conception. The increasingly popular Anglican view argues for personhood at implantation in the wall of the uterus.

But this reasoning synthesizes the actual rationale with an Aristotelian argument. The embryo could be seen as protected as potential human, but what if that potentiality for harmonious organization as a human being (i.e., the effect of having a human soul) could be undermined ante instantem ? Now, frankly this argument fails in the framework in which it is posed in the same way that the precedence of souls theory that once held sway in embryonic ontology. Genetic mutations do occur in which the child develops extremely abnormally (so it cannot possibly survive independently) but still is born nearly dead. And yet I believe it has a soul (which doesn't matter), but I also suspect that the Roman Catholic Church says it has a soul (which really does matter in this case). What worries me is that I cannot see any ontological difference between this genetically altered embryo before implantation and a naturally aberrant embryo before implantation.

ESA(20041207.1)