by John Paul Nunez
In the abortion debate, it’s often not enough simply to show that a fetus is the same being that eventually develops into an adult. Many defenders of abortion will concede this point and will argue that while fetuses are human beings, they’re not persons yet. They don’t claim that a person is something other than the physical organism or that the person comes to be at some point after conception. Rather, they contend that “person” refers to a human with certain abilities, much like “basketball player” does.
For example, nobody would say that Michael Jordan was a basketball player when he was a fetus, even though that fetus really was him. When we call him a basketball player, it simply refers to the time in his life when he has the ability to play basketball. He existed before he had that ability, and he’ll continue to exist after he loses it.
Similarly, according to this argument, when we call someone a person, it only refers to the time in one’s life when he can think rationally. We all existed before we gained this ability, and we can continue to exist after we lose it. So, the argument goes, only persons (humans with the ability to think rationally) have a right to life, and since fetuses aren’t persons, they don’t have a right to life. They gain that right some time later, so before that, we can kill them.
People often find this line of reasoning persuasive because it’s based on a kernel of truth. Personhood is intimately connected with rationality, but not in the way proponents of this argument contend it is. Persons aren’t characterized simply by the ability to think rationally right now; they can’t be. Think of a man in a reversible coma. He can’t think rationally right now, but nobody would deny that he’s a person. Rather, he’s a person because he’s the kind of being that can think rationally. He may have lost the ability to do so right now, but he’s still the kind of being that can.
To understand this point better, let’s compare me with a rock. Right now, neither of us can run a marathon, so in that respect, we’re similar. But there’s a big difference between us. While I can train and build up my stamina to the point where I can run a marathon, a rock will never be able to do so; it’s simply not the right kind of being. I, on the other hand, am the kind of being that can do so, even if I can’t do it right now. I have within my nature the ability to run a marathon, even if I haven’t developed that ability. And it’s the same with people in reversible comas. They’re still the kind of being that can think rationally. They have within their nature the ability to do so, even if they’ve temporarily lost the capacity to exercise that ability right now.
And it’s the same with fetuses, too. They’re also the kind of being that can be rational; they just haven’t developed that capacity to the point of being able to exercise it yet. So persons are characterized by having within their nature the ability to think rationally, even if they can’t exercise that ability just yet. And since fetuses fit this criterion, they must be persons too.
But this is only half of the argument. A defender of abortion can argue that up until this point, everything I’ve said is just semantics. It doesn’t matter how we want to use the word “person.” All that really matters is that the right to life is only gained once we can think rationally right now, so even if we want to call fetuses persons, they still don’t have a right to life.
But there’s a problem here. Like I said, nobody would deny that a man in a reversible coma is a person, but he obviously can’t think rationally right now. So according to this criterion, even though he’s a person, he doesn’t have a right to life. But I don’t know anybody who would say this. Nobody would say that it’s okay to kill him. So why does he have a right to life? It seems that the only reason we can give is because he’s a person, because he’s still the kind of being that can think rationally. The case of a man in a coma is a real problem for defenders of this argument for abortion.
Another problem for defenders of this argument is newborn babies. Newborns can’t think rationally yet, but most people would say it’s wrong to kill them. Again, they provide another example of a class of people who have a right to life but who can’t think rationally right now.
Aside from these counter-examples, there’s a more basic reason why this argument doesn’t work: there seems to be no non-arbitrary dividing line between those with a right to life and those without it. Since we gradually develop our intellectual abilities, there’s no significant difference between our level of development at one point and a few moments before it. For example, let’s say that we gain a right to life when we turn six months old. But our level of development at that point isn’t significantly different from a few days beforehand.
This is a problem because the difference between having and not having a right to life seems too important to be based on insignificant differences like this. The right to life is the basic right upon which all others are based, and to have this right is to be treated in a radically different way than we treat other beings, such as rocks, plant, and bugs. But such a radical difference in the way we treat people must be based on a radical difference between them, not simply on the tiny developmental difference between a six-month old and a baby a few days younger.
The only kind of difference radical enough to ground this difference is the difference between persons and other kinds of beings. While a baby does not change radically in a few days, it is radically different from an apple tree. We can kill the tree but not the baby because they’re different kinds of beings. One is a person, a being with a rational nature, and the other is just a plant.
So in the end, this argument for abortion doesn’t work. Even though fetuses can’t think rationally right now, they’re still the kind of being that can do so, so they’re still persons, which also means that they have a right to life just like a normal adult, a man in a reversible coma, and a newborn baby.
18 Responses to Are Fetuses Rational?
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Clearly and cogently stated, JP, well done.
More than several years ago now a famous feminist, I believe it was Camille Paglia, said something to the effect of, “You know, the fetus can’t be a ‘precious little baby’ when we want a child and a ‘lifeless blob of cells’ when we don’t. Let’s face the facts, the fetus is a person and we are merely asserting the right to kill it.”
A scary but honest statement on her part. The Pro-Life arguments can be as clear and sound as the one you put forth but when the fundamental right to life is being denied in the face of all arguments to the contrary and the “self” and “selfishness” trump all, it seems that we can put forth rational arguments and explanations until the cows come home and go back out again and there is just a certain segment of the population that we will never reach.
But, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t continue to try.
All the best,
-Greg
I’m sympathetic to the argument from “potential” regarding fetuses, infants, and so on (Bonhoeffer uses it quite well, for instance), but I agree and do think there are limits to its cogency. In order to apply a similar argument against euthanasia in other instances, such as those in a persistent vegetative state, or even those with physical or mental handicaps that they never achieve the level of “rationality,” I think a better way to construe the “potential” argument is to frame it in terms of what Moreland and Rae call in their book on theological anthropology “ultimate capacities.”
We define what it means to be human in terms of ultimate capacities, of which rationality is one, rather than in terms of actual capacities (e.g. how “rational” a person is concretely capable of being).
To draw a closer connection between the “potentiality” and “capacity” arguments, we might make an eschatological claim about the human person: even if the handicapped, injured, or developing human being never actually or even actually potentially (outside of a miracle) has the ability to reason (or whatever else is constitutive of human anthropology), we might argue that the fact that they will be raised bodily in the eschaton (presumably without the defects of fallen human nature), we recognize them as human persons (given their ultimate eschatological capacities).
John, you are once again trying to get an ethical conclusion out of metaphysical categorization; but this begs the question by assuming that the categories have the moral weight you are assigning to them.
Your basic argument is very clear. Everyone will agree that a person in a reversible coma is “a person because he’s the kind of being that can think rationally,” and that this (at least) gives him a continued right to life. You want to add to this that a fetus is also a person because it is also the kind of being that can think rationally.
But obviously the *way* in which each being has the capacity for rational thought is different. The one has all the basic elements, parts, or structure needed for such thought; there’s just a switch thrown the wrong way in the brain, so to speak, one we hope to reverse. The other is the kind of being which will develop such elements or structures in the fullness of time, but does not yet possess them. An analogy: we can all agree that my car is the kind of thing that can travel at 60mph under its own power, even if it’s out of gas at the moment, or is at the shop and its spark plugs have been temporarily taken out. But if you ask me to then agree that a bare chassis at the start of a GM assembly line is the kind of thing that can travel at 60mph under its own power–and worse, if you ask if I would pay anything close to $18K for it, I would decline. Is it *closer* to being that kind of thing than a rock? Yes. Does it have the same value as something that actually possesses that capacity? No.
You are correct, of course, that there is no non-arbitrary dividing line in the gestational process between persons and non-persons. Oddly, you make this completely correct statement after claiming that just such a line exists at conception. But perhaps your latter statement is really the correct one: there is no non-arbitrary dividing line. Any reasonable moral distinctions we make between persons and those beings which are developing into persons are going to have to be somewhat arbitrary, and ideally made in stages, like the gradual ways in which one can at some age get a learner’s permit, a farm equipment driving license, and a full-fledged driver’s license; not because you suddenly acquire some specific maturity or neuronal characteristics on your 16th or 18th birthday, but because the probabilities of doing great harm driving at earlier ages gradually increases, and we have to draw these lines somewhere or we reach absurd conclusions. Personhood really is a sorities problem; but just because we can’t arbitrarily designate a specific, uncontroversial line between a single grain and a million and say “now *that’s* a heap” doesn’t mean that we should call a single grain of sand a heap of sand. That’s just another way of avoiding the problem, rather than a solution to it.
@Jordan: I think you express well the “ultimate capacity” argument. But I’m not so sure that’s not present — certainly seminally, but even entirely — in JP’s notion of “potentiality.”
My suggestion would be that any potentiality a being possesses occurs in that being by virtue of its nature (e.g. the potential for rational reflection occurs because of a necessary essential feature of human nature; or the potential to grow petals occurs because of a necessary essential feature to being a rose; etc.) I think the “ultimate capacity” argument makes sense when it comes to humans (especially given you example of the eschaton), since our nature entails certain teleological realities that are proper to us alone; but I think the general form of the argument — one that can reach across various sorts of existents — is captured in terms of “potentiality.” (In other words, I’m not sure you could say there’s an “ultimate capacity” of a rose to be such-and-such way…)
Of course, maybe I’m missing something positive that “ultimate capacity” lends beyond mere potential (in a philosophical sense).
Jordan: I agree that ultimately, the argument needs to depend on ultimate capacities. So potentials are important because they indicate that a being has an ultimate capacity. And the only reason I left it at that is because in the abortion debate, we’re not dealing with humans who won’t ever regain the capacity for consciousness. But I agree that for things like the euthanasia debate, we do need to argue based on ultimate capacities, not simply potentials.
Scott: I don’t think your car analogy works. I don’t think a car is an individual thing the way a living organism is. Rather, it’s simply an aggregate of separate things that are fastened together and whose various functions come together to achieve the goal of the person or people who put them together. It’s like if I nail two pieces of wood together. Have I really made one new thing? Not really. I’ve just fastened together three things (the two pieces of wood and the nail), but they’re still separate objects. And that’s how I think a car is. So no, I don’t think that a bare chassis is the kind of thing that can go 60 mph.
And when I said that no non-arbitrary line exists between persons and non-persons on the view I’m arguing against, I meant once the being comes to exist. So since conception is the beginning of the organism’s existence, it doesn’t count as one of the times when there’s no non-arbitrary line. And there’s a real problem with making the right to life based on arbitrary lines. The right to life is not like the right to vote or the right to drive. Like I said in the post, it entails a radical difference in the way we treat beings. In a sense, to have a right to life is to be a part of our moral community. It’s the most basic of all rights. So to base such a radical difference on the way we treat humans on such a small difference like the different levels of development between (for example) a 6-month-old baby and a 5-month-and-30-day old baby is inadequate. There has to be a more radical difference between beings with and without a right to life. The difference between how we treat persons and non-persons is nothing like the difference between how we treat persons with and without the right to vote or the right to drive a car. They’re still part of our moral community, and they still have the same fundamental rights; there’s no radical difference in how we treat them. Plus, the only reason why we have to draw an arbitrary line between people who can and can’t vote or drive is because there is no non-arbitrary line that we can draw. But the case is different with having a right to life. There is a non-arbitrary line that we can draw: between beings that are the kind of being that can think rationally and those that aren’t.
And I agree that we can’t just call a single grain of sand a heap simply because we can’t draw a non-arbitrary line in that case. But it’s not analogous to the situation with human beings because nothing of any importance follows from where we draw the line between a small pile of sand and a large heap. But something of immense importance follows from where we draw the line between persons and non-persons, so it can’t be based on an insignificant difference.
And I’m curious. What do you think of the examples of newborns and people in comas? Are they persons? And if so, how on your view do they qualify even though they can’t think rationally?
Well, there we have it then. According to you, a chassis is not the kind of thing that can go 60mph, but neither is my car, because my car is not an “individual thing” that can go at 60mph or do anything else. We’ve just been driving around in aggregates all these years. Nailing two pieces of wood together with as many nails as you like, or pieces of plastic and metal, fails to produce anything more than an “aggregate of things,” regardless of how they interact functionally. Yet somehow lining up two long molecules that then proceed to interact does produce a new thing, even though each of their constituent atoms all the while surely obey all the ordinary functional laws which determine how they will interact with the forces impinging upon them, just like blocks of wood and metal components do.
So yes, if we are willing to make very arbitrary distinctions between “individuals” and “aggregates”, and let predetermined conclusions we wish to reach drive our ontology, however strange that ontology turns out to be, and then claim that the ontology itself forces certain ethical conclusions without those somehow having been built into the original ontological decisions, then it can indeed appear that your view is sound.
“to base such a radical difference on the way we treat humans on such a small difference like the different levels of development between (for example) a 6-month-old baby and a 5-month-and-30-day old baby is inadequate.”
OK, but for a few molecules to move a few milimeters from one side of a cell wall to another is also a pretty small difference. Obviously. So you haven’t escaped the sorities problem; you’ve only decided which corner of the room to paint yourself into. I agree with you in one respect; it would be really nice and convenient if such a sharp dividing line existed. It would end a lot of worries. And I suppose if we could convince ourselves that such a line existed, sans evidence, then as C.S.Peirce acknowledged, such a “resolution of doubt” fixing our belief can indeed be momentarily reassuring. At least as long as we don’t acknowledge to ourselves what we are doing. It’s hard to acknowledge that human development is gradual and continuous at *every* point. It’s worrisome, and I would even say existentially troubling. I understand why you would want to deny this; I feel the temptation too. But I don’t think that justifies arbitrary ontologies. The universe may simply not be as neat as we want it to be.
@Andrew: I think you are right, there are certainly ways in which they can overlap and even be synonymous. But I would distinguish something like “concrete” or “actual” potencies or potentiality with what kinds of ultimate capacities we have merely by virtue of our nature, our kind, our God’s resurrection promise. That is, the ultimate capacities argument broadens and gives concrete ground to the particular form of the potentiality argument John Paul uses with regard to (presumably healthy and normal) fetuses. You have to construe the argument somewhat differently when discussing radically injured or malformed humans at whatever stage of development. Someone whose only hope of achieving a particular level of consciousness or rationality is a miracle would be a person by virtue of their ultimate capacities, but certainly not by virtue of their actual instantiation or even theoretical this-side-of-glory potential to manifest such characteristics. As I noted, my comment certainly wasn’t meant as a critique of John Paul’s view, but merely was an attempt to elaborate a bit more and distinguish between cases like fetal potentiality, comas, persistent vegetative states, and so on.
Just to make that last issue more clear John: you deny that anything as momentous as a shift from non-personhood to personhood can be based on small, gradual, piecemeal physical changes. I agree that it *feels* this way. But then you’re hoist by your own petard; for you base something equally momentous on small, gradual, piecemeal physical changes: the very coming into existence of a moral entity on the basis of a few molecules moving a very slight distance while continuing to obey all the physical laws they’ve followed all along in a new environment.
OK, let me back up a bit and say something I should’ve said in my last post. Even though I personally don’t think that cars are individual things, that view still doesn’t disprove my argument. Let me explain. There’s a difference between a fetus and the beginnings of a car. A fetus has what we can call an active potential to think rationally, whereas a chassis only has a passive potential to become a car. A fetus has within itself all the resources it needs to develop itself to the point where it can think rationally. All it needs is proper nutrition and a hospitable environment. No outside source adds anything to it that enables it to think rationally; it develops that capacity from within itself. A chassis, on the other hand, won’t develop itself into anything on its own, no matter how much nutrition or how friendly an environment you give it. It simply doesn’t have the internal resources to be able to do that or to direct its own growth and development. Rather, it has a passive potential because it requires some other being to unite it with other parts to become a car. So there’s a big difference there. A fetus simply unfolds its own being; it simply develops what it already has within itself. A chassis, on the other hand, needs other parts to be added to it by another being to be able to go 60 mph; it doesn’t have within itself the resources to do so. So even if I’m wrong that a car isn’t an individual thing, my argument still stands.
Now, I don’t think that a car is an individual thing, but I do think that human beings are. And this is because of our profound experience of the unity of ourselves. I myself am obviously one thing, whatever I am. But I have a profound experience of my body as myself, which means that even though my body is composed of parts, it is one single thing (namely, me). Now this shows that there has to be some unifying principle that organizes the parts of my body into one thing but that is not present (at least I don’t believe it’s present) in man-made things, such as cars. But like I said, even if you disagree with this view, my argument still works anyway.
And yes, on the physical level, the difference between a human organism and something else can be the difference between the arrangement of a few molecules, but with that physical arrangement comes the unifying principle that wasn’t present before, and this principle makes all the difference. Now, you’re probably wondering what I think this unifying principle is. Personally, I think it’s the soul, but I’m not going to argue that it has to be the soul (mainly because that’s off topic). But let me say this much. The abortion debate in the public square is always based on the premise that human beings are the kinds of things most people think they are: namely, individual beings. So if somebody wants to say that my view makes the pro-life position dependent on the soul (I’m not saying you are; I’m just preemptively responding to that claim if somebody wants to make it), then you’d actually be arguing against the normal view of human beings, which is what the whole abortion debate in most cases is about. So the pro-life view isn’t dependent on the existence of the soul any more than the pro-choice view that is based on the normal view of human beings is. So you’d really be undercutting the fundamental conception of human beings on the pro-choice side as well. You’d be saying that human beings aren’t individual beings, which nobody except some professional philosophers would want to say (and if you want, we can debate the merits of something that only philosophers would want to say). So that was somewhat of a tangent, but I think it was a worthwhile one.
And now let me ask you a question. You didn’t respond to my point about newborns and those in comas. Are they persons? And if not, is it OK to kill them?
John, sorry I didn’t respond right away to your previous two tailing questions; but my posts are long enough as it is and I want to stay focused on the central issues and get you to justify your original claims, and others you make in their defense, rather than get involved in side issues. But note that the answer to your second question is implicit in my introduction of the car analogy: a comatose person has the capacity to be rational in much the same way that my car on the repair shop lift has the capacity to move at 60mph under its own power. Neither a human embryo nor a car chassis have such capacities in the way. As far as newborn infants, I don’t have any terribly interesting opinions about them. I’ll just point out that we’re not going to make very good progress debating whether the capacities of infants give them the right to life if you insist that the capacities of a newly fertilized egg are morally equivalent to those of either a fully-functioning or a temporarily comatose adult. I propose we stick to the more obvious cases first and discuss the hard ones later.
Now, you’ve proposed three completely different definitions or tests for what makes something an “individual thing”: (1) an individual thing is one which “has within itself all the resources it needs to develop itself”–perhaps just in some way or other, or perhaps specifically as rational beings. (This is already ambiguous; do you think that only human organisms are individual beings, or also all complete plant and animal organisms? Would a self-replicating computer program or robot be an individual being?) But you’ve also proposed (2) an individual thing is one which has a “profound experience of the unity of ourselves,” or perhaps one capable of such an experience, or developing itself into a being with such an experience? So maybe these two can be somehow combined, but you’ll need to be more explicit here. It is sounding more and more like idealism or monadism though, if it turns out that only conscious beings are individual things and the rest are just aggregates [though of what? For even atoms have components...are their ultimate components, perhaps superstrings, individual things; so it's just superstrings and conscious entities and those that will turn into conscious entities under their own direction? Or can you have aggregates which are not aggregates of individual things, so it's just us and the non-thing aggregates of non-things? Your ontology is getting weirder by the minute John.] (3) an individual thing is one with a “unifying principle”–I list this distinctly because something could conceivably have a sense of unity without a unifying principle, or vice versa. If by this you just mean what you mean under (1), then of course such unifying principles exist, and you could call it a soul but that’s just an odd name for various functional tendencies instantiated by certain physical structures due to the arrangements of their parts. If you mean something different, I have no idea what you mean.
In any case, if (2) is essential, I’ve got news for you; for as Hume pointed out, and the Buddhists long before him (so, billions of people, and not just a few “professional philosophers”), and agreeing with my own experience, we generally have no such experience of profound unity, just a bunch of ideas with more or less connection between them. Maybe /you/ have such a unique identifiable experience of “John’s selfness”; but I don’t, and if you insist I must be having one nevertheless and either lying or metaphysically blind, your view is essentially a kind of intuitionism. In any case, still less do I have any sense of unity, profound or mundane, with the fertilized egg or embryo that later developed, gradually, into me, any more than I sense any unity with the pre-fertilized egg or sperm that did likewise. So if this sense of unity is an important marker of actual unity, then you are wrong to foist your idiosyncratic views of it onto other people who have no such sense.
You seem to be saying here that both sides of the debate not only agree that human beings are “individual beings,” but that they are the latter in the particular sense in which you are using the term. Well, no, John. As noted above, I don’t fully understand how you are using the term, but insofar as I think I understand parts of what you’re saying about it, your claims strike me as so obviously wrong, counter-intuitive, deeply misleading, and very much opposed to ordinary usage by people all around the board, that I am simply boggled by the hubris of your saying that both sides agree on this point. They do no such thing, and you will never understand why so many millions of people disagree with you, nor why they appear so deaf to what perhaps strikes you as the obvious truth of your own arguments, until you realize that you are deeply and profoundly misattributing to most of us what “we” agree upon in this or any related debate.
But now notice what’s going on here. Let’s step back and look at the big picture. What are you doing John? You are trying to reach an ethical conclusion based on metaphysical categorization, while evading the fact that your choice of categories is highly ideosyncratic and driven precisely by the conclusion you are trying to support. It is *not* based on ordinary language or common intuitions. You’re using some semi-plausible claims and principles when they serve you, and failing to defend them when the going gets rough. For instance, your last message completely ignored the point I harped on in both my previous messages, that on the one hand you want to deny that anything morally important can depend upon minor changes, though this is exactly what you are doing at the heart of your argument. *Except* that you are now subtly shifting ground away from anything physical or detectable toward some kind of intuition of a “profound unity” or a “unifying principle,” which may or may not be a soul but that’s another story. Now here again we agree on something, I think: you *have* to make this shift to further defend your claim. Because if you stay on the level of observable physical characteristics, functional arrangements, and so forth, the motion of a few molecules remains insignificant, you can’t draw the lines between “things” the way you want to, and your argument fails on your own terms. So you *must* introduce something new, something metaphysical and not reducible to physical structures or activities, but something which *seems to you* to be there, and you want to claim that it must seem so to me, too.
But it doesn’t. And there’s your problem.
Scott: So let me ask you a question. What’s the way in which a comatose person has the capacity to be rational? I understand your analogy with the car in the shop, but I don’t see how that’s terribly different from fetuses. A fetus is clearly the kind of thing that can think rational even if it hasn’t fully developed that capacity yet; it’s much different from a rock, which will never ever be rational because it’s simply not the right kind of being. Look, if you want to argue based on the physical, observable facts, then the fact is that the fetus is the same organism as the adult. So if the adult is the kind of being that can be rational, then so is the fetus. So ultimately, the fetus and the comatose person are in the same boat. They’re both the kind of being that can think rationally even though they can’t do so right now. Sure, the reasons why they can’t do so right now are different, but I don’t see how those different reasons are very significant. What’s significant is the fact that they’re both the kind of being that can think rationally, but neither can do so right now. And you’re just dodging my question about newborns. Like a fetus, a newborn is the same organism as the adult, but it doesn’t have the capacity to think rationally yet. So the cases are very similar, and it seems that your view logically implies that infanticide is morally acceptable. You can be like Peter Singer and bite the bullet and admit that, but then most people won’t listen to you.
And if you want to say that you’re not a single, individual being, then again, most people in our society aren’t going to listen to you. I’ve never met anybody (pro-life or pro-choice) who thinks that they’re not a single, individual being. I was speaking hyperbolically when I said that nobody but professional philosophers would say that, but I still stand by my point that the average person on the street would think you’re crazy if you say you’re not a single, individual being. And that’s fine. You can deny that, and we can debate it, but that view isn’t going to get you very far with the general public (and, might I remind you, this is a blog about public policy and public life, not strictly a blog about philosophy). So let me ask you a question. Do you think composite material beings exist? Or do you think that the universe is simply a bunch of metaphysically simple entities that bond and form aggregates that we call cars and humans but that aren’t actually individual things?
And I’m not ignoring your point about the difference between the arrangement of a few molecules. I’m explaining why I think there’s a difference there; you just don’t like my reason. And that’s OK; you don’t have to like my reason. But don’t say that I’m not giving you a reason. As for the merits of that reason, I think I’ll write my next article on it, so rather than make this post any longer than it is, we can debate this next time.