The potential of an unhatched egg means that the egg can't be accurately described as belonging to the offspring, until the offspring actually exists.

The proto-chicken egg does become a chicken egg, but not until a chicken exists. While the egg that will eventually become a chicken egg does exist before the chicken, it is not a chicken egg until the chicken exists. Until there is a chicken, it is just the egg of a proto-chicken.

We are discussing which came first, the chicken or the chicken egg. The answer cannot be the egg. The answer can be "neither". The answer can the "the chicken", if by "before", we mean that the status of the egg is dependent on the existence of the chicken.

you define a chicken egg as an egg that came from a chicken, then if you have a dozen of eggs you cannot know whether they're chicken eggs or whatever eggs unless you know specifically a chicken laid them

Correct, but that is information that can be known, whether it is actually known or not. When you eat a bird egg, you can know what bird it came from. You cannot know what bird it would have become, specifically because you prevented it from ever becoming that bird.

You could speculate that it could have become a new species, based on the genetics within the egg. But, even if you didn't eat it, it could have failed to mature for any number of reasons. It might have become a new species of bird; it might have become a rotten egg.

The aphorism "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched" specifically warns us against considering the future possibilities of the egg.

The act of giving it a name is irrelevant.

The distinction between "chicken" and "egg" is biologically irrelevant: they both refer to the same organism. The terms are descriptive, not prescriptive. The organism will progress the same way, regardless of what we decide to say about it.

The chicken/egg argument is purely one of semantics. "Giving it a name" isn't just relevant to the discussion, it is the only factor relevant to the discussion.

The way you would have us describe the egg prevents us from accurately and consistently defining an egg. An egg laid by a chicken could mature into a new species, and by your arguments, should be described as an egg of that new species.

This creates a linguistic uncertainty in any case where the egg's potential is not and cannot be known. Is there a Shicken egg among the dozen you bought? A Blargleblat egg? Do you have the eggs of a dozen new evolutions with a common chicken ancestor? You cannot say with certainty.

However, if we describe the egg as the product of the creature that laid it, we have no such uncertainty. If we describe it as the possession of the offspring within it, we have no such uncertainty. The uncertainty only arises when we try to define it by an unknowable condition that may or may not occur.

My bad, I was making a different point with that analogy, and I had moved on some time ago. The app I'm using makes it difficult to read back up the thread.

I think we are making similar arguments. I would say that the egg Amy hatched from is the first "chicken's egg", but it is only the first chicken's egg because it belongs to Amy, and it did not exist until chicken-Amy existed, which was some time well after the egg was laid.

Sorry, I'm getting distracted with real life right now.

Amy is a proto-chicken. Her offspring, Brenda, is the first creature containing the mutation that distinguishes chickens from proto-chickens. Brenda is the first chicken.

Amy's egg couldn't be a chicken egg because there was no such thing as a chicken when she laid it. There would be no such thing as a chicken until Brenda existed, at which time the egg that would become Brenda also became a chicken egg.

The chicken egg could not have come first. The first chicken egg was laid by something that was not quite a chicken, but it didn't become a chicken egg until it had developed into a chicken.

it didn't somehow cease to have been an egg just because it doesn't hatch.

Correct. But, it was an egg laid by a proto-chicken; it is a proto-chicken egg.

Our proto-chicken couple also laid an egg that would have become a "Shicken", if I hadn't eaten it first. But, because there was never a "Shicken", there could never be a "Shicken" egg; the egg was only a proto-chicken egg.

So, it doesn't become a Chicken's egg until Brenda has come into existence. Brenda being the chicken. The chicken has to exist for the egg to become a Chicken's egg.

The first chicken egg is the egg that Brenda hatched from, but it didn't become a chicken egg until Brenda was a chicken and not just a (proto-chicken) egg.

That's about where I got to as well. A proto-chicken's egg that contains the genetic code for a chicken doesn't become a chicken egg if I eat it first. At best, the creature has to have become a chicken before the surrounding egg can be described as a chicken egg, which means that the chicken has to come first (or simultaneously). The egg cannot come first.

There is no question as to the biology. The first egg that would hatch a chicken was laid by a proto-chicken. The genetic mutation that delineated chicken from proto-chicken first existed in that egg.

By your argument, the status of the egg is dependent on what it contains.

Suppose that proto-chicken pair laid an egg. And instead of it hatching into a chicken, I ate it. This egg never became a chicken; it was only an egg. It couldn't be a chicken egg, because it never contained a chicken. It could only be a proto-chicken egg.

The egg that the chicken hatched from only became a chicken egg once there was a chicken inside it. The chicken egg, therefore, could not precede the chicken.

I agree, and I've made the same argument. It's perfectly valid, Unless the egg belongs to the creature who laid it, instead of the creature that hatched from it.

If the egg in question is a "proto-chicken's egg" because it was laid by a proto-chicken, then the chicken would have come before the chicken egg.

Amy is a chicken. Amy lays an egg. Brenda is a chicken. Brenda hatched from the egg Amy laid. The egg in question is clearly a chicken's egg, but is it Amy's egg, or Brenda's egg?

Is a "chicken egg" an egg laid by a chicken, or an egg that will hatch into a chicken?

Again..... How many people have gone to prison from this information? Because lack of prenatal care or access to reproductive care is responsible for over 1k deaths a year in the US alone.

You don't get to make that claim. You only get to claim harm arising from a patient refusing to provide dates of last menstruation, or similar information that can be used to time a pregnancy. The idea that women shouldn't seek care at all is your own strawman. I didn't make any such claim whatsoever. My claim is only that people should not be testifying against themselves to medical professionals.

And we have even more people determined to protect abortion rights, and many states have constitutional protections for this exact reason

And when they are charged or sued in a state that doesn't?

One of the major hurdles for prenatal and pediatric care among minority communities is a general distrust in medical systems. This stems from systemic racial inequalities that a lot of people within the medical system are attempting to actively change.

Those "systemic racial inequalities" you're talking about? Those exist. "Just trust doctors" doesn't solve them. "Just pretend there are no legal risks" doesn't save patients from having their medical data used against them. That's great that people in the field are actively trying to change that. But it does not change the fact that people outside the field are actively working in the opposite direction.

While we are waiting for sanity to be restored, anyone who can get pregnant and find themselves in the jurisdiction of a hostile state should consider the legal ramifications of discussing their period.

There is already an alarming lack of women's reproductive care,

How's the health care in prison?

Your suggestion that you should fear talking about a provider out of concern for the slim possibility that you will be prosecuted for having an abortion is outright dangerous.

Indeed, it is. As is your suggestion that the possibility of prosecution is "slim". We have highly motivated people seriously promoting pregnancy registries. They believe such registries are necessary to prevent murder.

Now weigh that against the amount of just black women who die every year for lack of prenatal care. What you are spreading is not only dangerous, but reeks of privilege.

You're hand waving away even the possibility of civil or criminal penalties for seeking healthcare, and I'm the one who sounds privileged?

Doctor patient confidentiality is not absolute, and even if it were, the associated records are not. They are subject to subpoena in certain circumstances.

It is unsafe to suggest that no doctor can be trusted with this type of information.

It is unsafe to suggest that they can. Safety isn't on the menu here. You can only get it with a referendum. Or a guillotine.

In some anti-abortion states, the information in question can potentially be used as evidence in a murder trial for having sought an abortion. A prosecutor can potentially use the timing of that previous period to suggest fetal age at the time of a future abortion may be greater than the law allows.

Doctors don't need that information. Insurance companies surely don't need that information.

Never go full do not.

The whole thing?

Godwin's law, not Murphy's.

How are you supposed to grind a flat on a screw recessed 2" in a hole?