Jason Samuel, a.k.a. Unlearned Hand, e-mails:
Today I got into a 'debate' on abortion with a coworker (or a fellow intern), and it was unusually amicable. Really, I tend to be quite levelheaded, whether or not I prevail or my points get across, so I didn't expect it not to be amicable.
I don't know what the first thing is one learns in law school, but it ought to be: never blow your cool!
As you can imagine though, we hit an impasse when my adversary did not want to admit that there exists life at conception. I tried to impress upon her that fetology demands that she accept this, it's demonstrably fact. So, the dispute just moved to whether the life that's present at conception we can call human. Anyhow, this made me think of a part of one of your posts where you say that it's useless to begin the abortion debate with defining when life begins--or something to that effect.
I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction then. What are the sorts of things I should be 'beginning' with in such a debate?
1. Is there life at conception? Well of course, assuming that the conception was successful. A fertilized egg is living. Otherwise it is dead. So what's to discuss?
2. Is there human life at conception? Well of course, assuming that the conception was successful and the spermatazoon and ovum came from human beings. If someone denies that a human life begins at conception, then you say: Is the zygote dead? Is it perhaps bovine or lupine rather than human?
3. When does life begin? This question ought to be avoided because it is imprecise. Presumably we are interested in ontogeny not phylogeny, and in humans rather than other animals. So the question to ask is: When does an individual human life begin? The answer to this question is easy: at conception. For if an individual human life begins at some time t after conception, then what existed before t would have to be either not an individual or not human or not alive. And the absurdity of that ought to be self-evident.
4. But the real question, the hard question, and the question that the abortion debate centers on is different from the above easy questions. It is the question: When does an individual human life acquire person-status, the normative status of being a person, a status that confers upon it rights such as the right to life?
In a simpler form, the question is: When does an individual human life become a rights-possessor? The answer to this question is not obvious. At conception? At viability? At birth?
5. Here is one argument you can try out on your 'adversary.' Get her to concede that infanticide is morally wrong, and wrong because it violates the right to life of the infant. Then ask her if there is a difference that makes a moral difference between a neonate (a fresh born infant) and an unborn fetus that is just about to emerge from the mother's womb. When she is unable to point to a difference that would justify a difference in treatment, then say that abortion near the end of the pregnancy is just as morally wrong as infanticide is. Of course, she might bite the bullett and claim that both are morally acceptable!
Here is an analogy. Whether you kill me inside my house or outside my house makes no moral difference. Whether you kill me a little earlier or a little later makes no moral difference. So whether you kill a fetus inside the mother or oustide, a little earlier or a little later, makes no moral difference.
More later. See also this short post of mine.
Related Posts (on one page):
- When Does An Individual Human Life Begin?
- On Being and Being a Member of a Kind
- Four Senses of 'Person'
- How to Formulate the Abortion Question
The root of the problem is our use of the word 'person'. First, it is being used to denote an entity in isolation from a context (a world that is comprised of, among other things, other persons). Second, it is a static category used to characterize something inherently dynamic and developmental. We are using it as a hanger for attributes (subjectivity, will, intentionality...), and we end up arguing over which and how many of these attributes are sufficient to allow us to bestow the mantle 'person'.
When used consistently in these ways, it produces results that at least seem unsatisfactory. Either:
a) It is (sometimes, but also as a matter of policy) morally acceptable to kill a person who is innocent, or
b) a fertilized egg, per se, is a person and it is therefore murder to kill a fertilized egg. (I would argue that viability is arbitrary insofar as it is a function of technological skill at any given time in history -- besides there are plenty of entities that we would call human that are not viable, absent technological intervention).
I'm not sure where a view from the totality of a context leaves us, except to say that abortion is an intrisically moral decision, and therefore not properly a legal matter.
Thanks for the stimulating comment.
A philosophical anarchist opposes coercive government on moral grounds. But I wonder: couldn't there be an anarchist who was for laws as long as they were all agreed upon by all the members of his community? If so, opposition to laws could not be built into the definition of philosophical anarchism.
If X is immoral it does not follow that X ought to be illegal. (Getting prodigiously drunk by yourself in your house is immoral, but ought not be illegal. Or so I would argue.) A more difficult question is whether, given that some things are immoral, one could also hold that nothing ought to be illegal. That is probably incoherent, but it would take some serious arguing to show it.
It would make a good blog post.
Thanks for the comment.
I don't see why person is "a static category used to characterize something inherently dynamic and developmental." Are you perhaps uncritically assuming the correctness of Heidegger's crtique of the concept of person in Sein und Zeit? It's a bit of a strawman. But I do think Heidegger has some good insights into human being: Dasein is essentially futural, etc.
Actually, I didn't intend to draw Heidegger into this at all. I was just looking at the use of the word 'person' in your post and many others' arguments. It is used as if it meant something that had a precise denotation and a definite collection of attributes.
rob
You say: "[I]f an individual human life begins at some time t after conception, then what existed before t would have to be either not an individual or not human or not alive. And the absurdity of that ought to be self-evident."
This is surely so in some sense, but it does not entail that what existed before t was a human being.
Many things are individual, human and live but are not human beings. For 'human' is said in many ways. It is said of both human beings, parts of human beings, products of human beings,and others. Take the example of my heart. It is most certainly alive. It is individual, for it is this particular heart and not heart in general (whatever that might be). It is human. The heart that beats in my chest was not transplanted from a nonhuman species. It is the original and thus is a human heart.
So from the propition:
x is individual, alive and human
it does not follow that x is a human being. But if that x is not a human being, we have little or no reason as yet to accord it any more than neglibible instrinsic moral status. My heart matters, but it matters only in that I need it to live. Intrinsically, it matters little or not at all.
Conclusion. From the proposition:
A fertilized ovum is individual, alive and human
nothing as yet follows about its intrinsic moral status. For one might hold that the fertilized ovum is human but not a human being; and if it is human but not a human being, we as yet have no reason to accord it non-neglibible intrinsic moral status.
Indeed this is just what I hold. I am a human being, and the fertilized ovum created my mother's womb in the winter of 1968 was not me. It was a precusor to me, and was human in the sense that it was a human and not say a porcine precursor. But I did not come to exist until later.
Excellent comment. You are right that from x's being individual, alive and human (composed of human genetic mat'l) it does not follow that x is a human being. My heart is individual, alive, and human but not a human being. (Similarly, the parts of the heart are not themselves hearts.) But while you are talking about a synchronic relation of a spatial whole to its spatial parts, I was talking about a diachronic relation between earlier and later stages of one and same whole biological individual.
So although I concede your point, my point still strikes me as true. If x becomes a living biologically human whole individual at some time t after conception, then before t what was it? Was it biologically nonhuman, lupine perhaps? No. Was it nonliving? No. Was it not a whole individual? No.
My spatial proper parts are not human beings. But my temporal proper parts are human beings. BV-at-10, BV-at-1, BV-at-birth, BV-at-the beginning-of-the-third- trimester -- each of these 'dudes' is a living, biologically human, whole individual.
Of course, that doesn't resolve the question of whether any of these 'dudes' is a person in the normative sense such that it would be wrong to kill it. But that wasn't the question in #3 of my post.
So what's your background in philosophy? You are obviously very sharp!
Let me complement you on your work. It is atriculate and to the point. This is why I am here.
Now on to business.
First I must say that I am no temporal parts theorist. I deny that we have any such things. My only parts are my spatial parts. But I am unsure whether this point of dispute is relevant to the discussion.
You ask: "If x becomes a living biologically human whole individual at some time t after conception, then before t what was it? Was it biologically nonhuman, lupine perhaps?" My view is not that, if x becomes a human being at some time after conception (call it t'), it existed in some other form before t'. Rather I hold that at t' x comes to exist. For we human beings, coming to be human is coming to exist. Now, I hold that what existed before t' but after t was not a human being but a human precursor of a certain sort. A sperm is a human presursor. So too is an unfertilized ovum. From the biological point of view, I would place the fertilized ovum with sperm and pre-fertilization ovum. All are human, in a sense, but are not human beings. All are individual, and all are alive. All are human precursors, for they are the biological 'actors' whose function it is to bring human beings into existence. (A bit rough, I know. But this is all the precision I can muster at present.)
Now this is just a view and not an argument. I could at most sketch that argument. Its details are not yet worked out. Perhaps on my own blog . . .
I suspected as much. Now that I know for sure, I will have to be more careful. One question: why not let the readers of your fine blog know that you have a philosophy Ph.D. and have taught at the places you mentioned? I wouldn't call that bragging, and it allows your readers to more easily interpret your remarks, not to mention lending them more credibility.
There is a lot to chew on in your comment, and some of it I may address in separate posts. But for now I'll just say a few things. I agree that sperm and egg prior to the sperm's fertilization of the egg are not human beings: neither has the potentiality by itself in the normal course of events to develop into what all would call a human being. But I think of the result of their union differently. A sperm cell by itself is not a human being, and the same goes for an egg cell taken by itself. And ditto for the mere collection of the two. But when the two unite at the moment of conception, something new comes into existence, something that cannot be understood as the mere sum of the gametes. Now we have a human individual (not mere human genetic stuff) with the potential to develop into something to which we will have no trouble according person status with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereunto.
Like you, I am not arguing, but simply stating and refining my view. Perhaps in a separate post I will discuss the "for humans, coming to be human is coming to exist" thesis.
I take it that for you, zygote, embryo and fetus are not human individuals (beings). Is a neonate a human individual? If yes, what is the difference between the neonate and the fetus?
2. Disallowing comments from a particular person, or deleting an offensive, off-topic, or otherwise substandard comment, has nothing to do with censorship. People who think otherwise confuse censorship with lack of sponsorship. I am under an obligation not to interfere with anyone's exercise of legitimate free speech rights. But I am not under any obligation to aid and abet anyone's exercise of free speech rights, legitimate or illegitimate.
3. The Comments area is not an open forum for anyone to say anything about any topic. As the name implies, it is primarily for commenting on the author(s)' posts. But to comment on them, one must have read them. And if I have spent three hours on a post, a reader will not understand it in thirty seconds. Secondarily, the Comments area is to facilitate civil discussion between and among commenters as long as the discussion remains on-topic.
4. Some undesirables: The skimmers, those who cannot read but only read-in. The sophists who, abusing argument, argue for the sake of argument. The ideologues, those who are out for power, not truth. The uncivil. The illogical. The politically correct. Worst of all, perhaps, are those who exemplify the anti-Socratic property: those who think they know what they don't know. If Socrates was famous for his learned ignorance, these types are marked by their ignorant unlearnededness.