You make a good point. That said, the sentence is still a bit awkward when you replace “engender” with “beget,” so it remains a bit unclear if that is what was meant.

You might be interested to read some of the discussion that came up previously about this same point on a different thread starting here. My take on it followed that comment here.

From the 1828 dictionary:

GEN’DER, v.t. To beget; but engender is more generally used.

GEN’DER, v.i. To copulate; to breed. Levit. 19.

[substituting Beget for Gender]

From the cite:

“God is Good & all his acts is for the benefit of inferior intelligences-God saw that those intelligences had Not power to Defend themselves against those that had a tabernacle therefore the Lord Calls them together in Counsel & agrees to form them tabernacles so that he might [beget] the Spirit & the tabernacle together so as to create sympathy for their fellowman.”

The issue is not CREATING A PERSON OF SEX from a non-sexed spirit to “create sympathy” and help out inferior intelligences — but sending a spirit (that already is inherently one of the sexes) into the world to help out inferior intelligences.

Scott

In the case of a particular, we often call this formal property by the Scotist name of “haeccity”, or this-ness, that which guarantees the distinguishibility of two otherwise identical objects.

In Quantum Mechanics this is a big deal, having massive thermodynamic and structural consequences. We know by those consequences that all bosons and fermions are indeed equal – i.e. one can swap identities of any pair of electrons or photons, and the difference is immaterial and non-existent to an exceedingly high degree of precision. Otherwise all of modern physics wouldn’t work.

Now an intelligence cannot work that way, otherwise there would be no locus for moral responsibility, blameworthiness, or reward. The intelligence at the locus of perception could simply swap places with any other intelligence, and the latter would be punished for no reason.

Without moral action as a consequence of the free will of a distinguishable agent, there is no basis for justice, mercy, repentance, and so on, either. Everything becomes either an accident or a necessity or something inbetween, but not a morally significant decision to act according to or in contravenience from the light one has been given.

Now I say that “fleeting identity” is an effective oxymoron, because that which is fleeting is momentary or ephemeral, and identity is literally that and only that which is preserved unalterably over time.

Properties and qualities and configuration may change, but unless there is something metaphysically in common between the state of the object or person at times A and B, identity is more fictive, or conventional than real.

The plan of salvation requires real identity to make any sense. For Pratt that was the identity of each particle of intelligence. That is not particularly realistic anymore, but something must have metaphysical identity to be a morally responsible agent at all. That something is what Joseph Smith calls an intelligence, or sometimes the “eternal spirit”.

It is only an oxymoron if you make personal identity synonymous with what I think is more appropriately called “essence”. Most people seem to assume personal identity consists of all sorts of qualities that are fleeting over time. What do you think identity consists of?

Geoff said: “I have shown on several occasions that our current personal identity is fleeting…”

That “fleeting” identity (imo) must be present and accounted for at the veil. It is an indespensible component of the total composit creature.