An argument in pictures and symbols

Drawings: Adobe stock; Photos: elephant and human

The essentiality of dignity

Start with this:

1. Dignity is an essential property of anything that has it.

2. Necessarily, something has dignity if and only if it is a person.

3. Therefore, personhood is an essential property of anything that has it.

Now, suppose the standard philosophical pro-choice view that

4. Personhood consists in developed sophisticated cognitive faculties of the sort that fetuses and newborns lack but typical toddlers have.

Consider a newborn, Alice. By (4) Alice is not a person, but if she grows up into a typical toddler, that toddler will be a person. By (3), however, we cannot say that Alice will have become that person, since personhood is an essential property, and one cannot gain essential properties—either you necessarily have them or you necessarily lack them.

Call the toddler person “Alicia”. Then Alice is a different individual from Alicia.

So, what happens to Alice once we get to Alicia? Either Alice perishes or where Alicia is, there is Alice co-located with her.

Let’s suppose first the co-location option. We then have two conscious beings, Alice and Alicia, feeling the same things with the same brain, one (Alice) older than the other. We have standard and well-known problems with this absurd position (e.g., how does Alicia know that she is a person rather than just being an ex-fetus?).

But the option that Alice perishes when Alicia comes on the scene is also very strange. For even though Alice is not a person, it is obviously appropriate that Alice’s parents love for and care for her deeply. But if they love for and care for her deeply, they will have significant moral reason to prevent her from perishing. Therefore, they will have significant moral reason to give Alice drugs to arrest her intellectual development at a pre-personhood stage, to ensure that Alice does not perish. But this is a truly abhorrent conclusion!

Thus, we get absurdities from (3) and (4). This means that the pro-choice thinker who accepts (4) will have to reject (3). And they generally do so. This in turn requires them to reject (1) or (2). If they reject (2) but keep (1), then Alice the newborn must have dignity, since otherwise we have to say that Alice is a different entity from the later dignified Alicia, and both the theory that Alice perishes and the theory that Alice doesn’t perish is unacceptable. But if Alice the newborn has dignity, then the pro-choice argument from the lack of developed sophisticated cognitive abilities fails, because Alice the newborn lacks these abilities and so dignity comes apart from these abilities. But if dignity comes apart from these abilities, then the pro-choice argument based on personhood and these cognitive abilities is irrelevant. For it dignity is sufficient to ground a right to life, even absent personhood.

So, I think the pro-choice thinker who focuses on cognitive abilities will in the end need to deny that dignity is an essential property. I suspect most do deny that dignity is an essential property.

But I think the essentiality of dignity is pretty plausible. Dignity doesn’t seem to be something that can come and go. It seems no more alienable than the inalienable rights it grounds. It’s not an achievement, but is at the foundation of what we are.

From fetal pain to the impermissibility of abortion

At some point in pregnancy it is widely acknowledged that fetuses start to feel pain. Estimates of this point vary from around seven to thirty weeks of gestation.

We cannot directly conclude from the fact that some fetus can feel pain that killing that fetus is impermissible. For it seems permissible, given good reason, to humanely kill a conscious non-human animal. But perhaps there is an indirect argument. I want to try out one.

It has been argued that if the fetus is the same individual as the adult person that the fetus would grow into, then it is wrong to kill the fetus for the same reason that it is wrong to kill the adult: the victim is the same, and no more deserving of death, while the harm of death is greater (the fetus is deprived of a greater chunk of life).

But if a fetus can feel pain, then this offers significant support for the hypothesis that the fetus is the same individual as the resultant adult. Imagine the fetus has a constant minor chronic pain, is carried to term, and grows into an adult, without ever any relief to the pain. The adult will then feel the pain. If the fetus is not the same individual as the adult, there are two possibilities at the time of adulthood:

1. There are two beings feeling pain: the adult and the grown-up fetus.

2. At some point the grown-up fetus had perished and was replaced by a new individual feeling pain.

Option (1) seems crazy: if I have a headache while sitting alone on the sofa, there is only one entity in pain on the sofa, namely me, rather than me and some grown-up fetus. Option (2) is also rather implausible. On our hypothesis we have the continuous presence of a brain state correlated with pain, and yet allegedly at some point the individual with the pain perishes and a new individual inherits the brain with the pain. That doesn’t seem right.

If we reject both (1) and (2), we have to conclude that the fetus in pain is the same individual as the adult that it grows up into. And thus we conclude that at least once fetuses are capable of pain, abortion is wrong.

This argument doesn’t say anything about what happens prior to the possibility of fetal pain. I think that is still the same individual, but that requires another argument.

Against the incredulous stare objection to our coming into existence at conception

There are two main kinds of arguments against abortion: Those based on the idea that we begin existing at conception and those based on the idea that personhood begins at conception.

One of the main objections to thinking that our existence begins at conception is the incredulous stare: How can that single cell be me?!

Here my recent geometrical observations about how I will be very small in almost every reference frames become relevant. Exactly the same argument establishes that in almost every reference frame, I start out really small. In almost every reference frame, I start out less than a nanometer in size (any non-zero size can be substituted here), and hence much smaller than a single cell.

Thus, it seems we are simply stuck with a counterintuitive result about what we are like at our beginning. Even if we don’t begin at conception, in almost all reference frames we begin as something much smaller than a single cell.

Can the geometrical observations show that personhood begins really small, too, and thereby undercut the incredulous stare at the idea that a single cell is a person?

Now, if we are essentially persons, given that by the previous argument we begin smaller than a cell, then indeed something smaller than a cell is a person.

So the remaining case to consider is views on which we are only accidentally persons, and we pre-exist our personhood. A typical view in this family will say that we are animals that come into existence at conception or implantation, and that about 1.5-2 years after our beginning, we come to have the property of personhood.

In the previous argument, I looked at the set K of all the spacetime locations of my body, and it followed that for almost every reference frame F, there was a time t in F and near my beginning such that the t-slice of me was really tiny. The obvious analog is to look at the set K^* of all spacetime locations of my personal body—i.e., of my body at times at which I am a person—and repeat the argument. The problem with this move is that whether a spacetime location is within my body is intuitively independent of reference frame, but whether a spacetime location is within my personal body could more plausibly depend on the reference frame, if my 4D personal body is not all of my 4D body.

So at this point, I don’t have a version of my smallness argument against the view that to be a person I have to be big, when that view is coupled with the idea that I can exist without being a person.

Gaining and losing personhood?

1. Love (of the relevant sort) is appropriately only a relation towards a person.

2. Someone appropriately has an unconditional love for another human.

3. One can only appropriately have an unconditional R for an individual if the individual cannot cease to have the features that make R appropriate towards them.

4. Therefore, at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person. (1–3)

5. If at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person, then all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person.

6. If all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person, then it is impossible for a non-person to become a human person.

7. All humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person. (4,5)

8. It is impossible for a non-person to become a human person. (6,7)

9. Any normal human fetus can become a human person.

10. Therefore, any normal human fetus is a person. (8,9)

(I think this holds of non-normal human fetuses as well, but that’ll take a bit more argument.)

It’s important here to distinguish the relevant sort of love—the intrinsically interpersonal kind—from other things that are analogously called love, but might perhaps better be called, say, liking or affection, which one can have towards a non-person.

I think the most controversial premises are 2 and 9. Against 2, I could imagine someone who denies 7 insisting that the most that is appropriate is to love someone on the condition of their remaining a person. But I still think this is problematic. Those who deny 7 presumably do so in part because they think that some real-world conditions like advanced Alzheimer’s rob us of our personhood. But now consider the repugnance of wedding vows that promise to love until death or damage to mental function do part.

Standing against 9 would be “constitution views” on which, normally, human fetuses become human animals, and these animals constitute but are not identical with human persons. These are ontologies on which two distinct things sit in my chair, I and the mammal that constitutes me, ontologies on which we are not mammals. Again, this is not very plausible, but it is a not uncommon view among philosophers.

Complicity, Fetal Tissue and Vaccines

I just got permission from the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly to post my 2006 paper on fetal tissue and vaccines. It is here.

Vaccines and cell-lines descended from tissue derived from abortion

A number of Catholic authorities have made a moral distinction between the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, on the one hand, and the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, on the other, with respect to the involvement of cells that descend (after many generations) from an aborted fetus (e.g., see here and here). The difference appears to be that in the Pfizer and Moderna cases, the cells were only used in a confirmatory test of efficacy, while in the other two vaccines, they were used throughout the development and production. Consequently, the Catholic authorities said that the AstraZeneca (AZ) and Johnson & Johnson (JJ) vaccines may be used if no alternatives are available, but the Pfizer and Moderna are preferable if available.

A colleague at another institution asked me if I thought that the moral distinction here is sustainable. I do think it is, and my judgment concurs very closely with the recent statements from Catholic authorities: all four vaccines may (indeed, should) be used, but the Pfizer and Moderna ones are to be chosen when available.

In a 2004 paper, I argued that (a) while it is not categorically forbidden to engage in research using cell-lines that ultimately descend from tissue from an aborted fetus, (b) this may only be done for “sufficiently beneficial purposes”. Such research—and likewise the use of the fruits of the research—is thus a situation that involves the weighing of different factors rather than categorical prohibitions. It seems clearly right that in the case of the vaccines (AZ and JJ) where the illicitly derived cell-lines are used more heavily, we have more of the morally problematic feature, and hence we need greater benefits to outweigh them. Those benefits are available in the case of the current pandemic when alternatives that involve less of the problematic features are not available: thus the AZ and JJ vaccines may be used when the alternatives are not available. But when the alternatives—which also appear to be significantly more effective as vaccines!—then they should be used.

In a 2006 paper, I argued that the Principle of Double Effect allows one to use, and even manufacture, vaccines that make use of the morally tainted cell-lines. The use of the cell-lines in itself is not innately morally evil (after all, it need not be wrong to transplant an organ from a murder victim). What is problematic is what I call “downstream cooperation” with the plans of those involved in the evil of abortion: they likely acted in part (probably in very small part) in order to procure tissue for public health benefits, and now by using the vaccine, we are furthering their plans. But one need not intend to be furthering these plans. Thus, that “downstream cooperation” is something one should weigh using the complex proportionality calculus of Double Effect. In the paper I concluded that the use of the vaccines is permissible, and in the present emergency the point is even clearer. However, it seems to me that the more heavily the cell-lines are used, the more there is of the unintended but still problematic cooperation with the plans of those involved in the evil of abortion, and so one should opt for those vaccines where the cooperation is lesser when possible.

I note that even apart from the moral considerations involving cell-lines descended from aborted fetuses, in a time of significant and unfortunate public vaccine scepticism, it was rather irresponsible from the public health standpoint for the vaccine manufacturers to have made use of such cell-lines if there was any way of avoiding this (and I do not know if there was given the time available).

A reductive account of parthood in terms of causal powers

Analytic philosophers like to reduce. But not much work has been done on reduction of parthood. Here’s an attempt, no doubt a failure as most reductive accounts are. But it’s worth trying.

Suppose that necessarily everything has causal powers. Then we might be able to say:

1. x is a part of y if and only if every (token) causal power of x is a causal power of y.

Some consequences:

2. Transitivity

3. Reflexivity

4. If nothing other than x shares a token causal power with x, then x is mereologically simple and does not enter into composition. Plausibly nothing shares a token causal power with God, so it follows that God is mereologically simple and does not enter into composition.

How does this work for hard cases where parthood is controversial?

Suppose I lose a leg and get a shiny green prosthesis. If the prosthesis is a part of me, then the prosthesis’ power of reflecting green light is a power I have. It seems about as hard to figure out whether the power of reflecting green light is a power that I have as it is to figure out whether the prosthesis is a part of me. So here it is of little help.

Suppose I am plugged into a room-size heart-lung machine. Is the machine a part of me? Well, the machine has the power of crushing people by its weight. It seems intuitively right to say that by being plugged into that machine, I have not acquired the power of crushing people. So it seems that it’s not a part of me.

Is a fetus a part of the mother? Here, maybe the story is some help. The fetus eventually acquires certain powers of consciousness. These do not seem to be powers of the mother—she can be conscious while the fetus is awake. So, once consciousness is acquired, the fetus is not a part of the mother. But earlier, the fetus as the power to acquire these instances of consciousness, and the mother does not seem to, so earlier, too, the fetus does not seem to be a part of the mother. Here the story is of some help, maybe.

However, one doesn’t need all of (1) for some of the applications. The “only if” part of in (1) is sufficient for the heart-lung machine and pregnancy cases.

Almeida on moral status of fetuses and newborns

Mike Almeida has posted a very interesting argument on prosblogion to the effect that fetuses and newborns have the same moral status as adults. There is lots of good discussion there. He then posted an interesting follow-up argument.

Of corals, fetuses and the law

My three-year-old son wanted a bunch of books about sea creatures from the library. One of these was a pretty children's book about corals and what lives among them. The book contains a thorough description of coral reproduction. After talking of the sperm and egg uniting, the book says: "With fertilization, a new life begins." This, I take it, is a quite uncontroversial claim. That is precisely when a new coral's life begins.

And there does not seem to be very good reason why there should be any more controversy in the case of humans. Corals reproduce sexually, and typically[note 1] so do we. Sperm and egg unite in very much the same way. It seems that if the new coral comes into existence at fertilization, we should say exactly the same thing about a new human, without any controversy.

Of course, I know about the alleged distinctions between being a human organism and being a human person, and all that. But these seem both implausible and not scientifically grounded.

Here is something more like a policy argument, albeit a conditional one. If we do not wish our jurisprudence to rest on controversial "comprehensive" philosophical or religious views (not that there is anything wrong it resting on such a basis, but a lot of people don't like it), we should have a strong preference for formulating our laws in terms of concepts derived from science. Thus, our laws should not make reference to race, if it turns out that race is not a scientifically respectable category. (But note that it could be that although race is not a respectable category of any natural science, being socially classified as a member of race R could still be a respectable category of a social science, and could function as a concept in a law.) As much as we can, then, our laws should understand death in whatever way biologists do, with whatever fuzziness biologists see in death. Similarly, we should not use the non-scientific concept of a "person", since that is a concept tied to controversial metaphysical or ethical views, but in our formulations should divide things up scientifically, presumably using the fairly respectable concept of a "human being" or "human organism" instead. To draw a line between those human organisms who are persons and those who are not would, then, be something we should avoid. Presumably, then, we should legally protect the life of all human organisms (or at least the innocent ones). At least if we don't want the law to rest on controversial "comprehensive" philosophical or religious views.