I once heard this amusing observation about the abortion debate:
The Pro-Life side is usually characterized as being religious. And religious people – as everyone knows – hate the natural sciences. “Pro-Choice” people tend to be secular. And secular people – as everyone knows – love the natural sciences.
Now, the central question to abortion is the status of the thing growing inside the mother’s womb. If that thing is a little human being, then you cannot do violence against it. If it is a blob of amorphous tissue, then do whatever you want to it.
In regard to this question, the Pro-Life side is happy to appeal to the findings of the natural sciences.
“Here is an ultrasound,” says the pro-lifer, “Here are some medical journals on gestational development. Here are some biology textbooks defining terms like ‘human’ and ‘life’ and ‘organism’. Let me know if you have any questions!”In the face of this question it is the supporters of abortion legality who suddenly put on a philosopher’s hat, furrows their collective brow, and ask:
“What is a human person anyway? What does it mean to be a person? Can a child in the womb write poetry? Can it do mathematics? Does it feel emotions?”This philosophical rumination forms the basis of what I call the Argument for the Legality of Abortion from Personhood (AFLAFP).
The Argument:
The argument might be stated like this:
Premise 1: A person is an organism who is capable of consciousness, reasoning, emotion, and making choices.
Premise 2: A fetus in-utero does not have those capabilities.
Conclusion 1: A fetus in-utero is not a person.
Premise 3: Murder is the intentional killing of a person.
Conclusion 2: Abortion is not murder.So… what does one do with this?
Well, it is a valid argument. The conclusions do follow from the premises. So the question is whether the premises are valid. The lynchpin to the whole argument is in Premise 1.
Reductio!
The first premise is a bare assertion regarding what constitutes a “person”. This invites the question:
“Says who? Why should I believe your criteria reflects the correct understanding of personhood?”The biggest issue with that definition of personhood is that it rests not in what the organism is, but what the organism does. The criteria is functional, not ontological.
If that is the case, then we can assume that any living organism which lacks those capabilities is not a person. Further, if an organism has those capacities in a profoundly diminished state, that organism is less of a person than one which has them in full.
So what happens when we apply that principle to situations other than children in the womb? What do we get when we apply this principle elsewhere?
Deep Coma Patient:
How about a human in a deep, medically induced coma. That human has no consciousness, no reasoning, experiences nothing, has no emotions, makes no choices, and is fully dependent on others for survival. Lacking all those person-making capabilities, one can only conclude that the human in a deep coma ceases to be a person. Right?
The interlocutor might respond that a person in a deep coma has the capacity for these things, but just not right now. These capacities will come back as soon as his/her biology allows it. To which you may point out that this is a new definition of the criteria of personhood. If the criteria involves the capacity of having those capabilities in the future, then same could be said of the child in-utero.
The Mentally Handicapped:
Or how about a person with profound mental handicaps. There are some children who are born with those personhood-endowing traits in a vastly diminished capacity when compared to a healthy human. Are we to conclude that the profoundly mentally handicapped are to be regarded as possessing less personhood?
Babies vs Clever Animals:
One could also use this functional criteria and come up with some cross-species comparisons. For instance, a newborn baby has these personhood-endowing mental capabilities to a lesser extent than an adult raccoon. It would follow that an adult raccoon is more of a person than a newborn baby. And thus it is more wrong to kill a raccoon than a baby.
I doubt your interlocutor really wants to go to any of these conclusions. But they follow from the premise that personhood is lodged in our capabilities. This shows that the functional definition of personhood reduces to absurdity and cannot be true.
Bad Company:
Another avenue for combating this argument is to ask your interlocutor if a child in utero is a member of our species. Even if he wants to quibble about the word “person”, this classification is far more grounded in biology. It is a biological fact that pre-birth humans are members of our species.
At this point you can point out that the AFLAFP basically boils down to this:
“There are some humans which are not persons … and it is OK to kill them.”Or perhaps one could make it absolutely clear when stating it like this:
Get the point? History is a long march of tyrants redefining personhood to make it OK to kill people they find inconvenient. By making this argument your interlocutor joins that auspicious club.
So What is a Person?
Still, one might wonder what definition of “person” we could use. I would propose this definition:
A member of a rational species.Or
A living organism belonging to a rational species.That definition places personhood in what you are, rather than what you are capable of. Thus, it avoids the problems illustrated above. It affirms that all humans are person and thus deserve to be treated with the dignity of persons.
You're not quite hitting the mark. You're moving the target a little.
ReplyDelete"A member of a rational species"
This is defining a human person by what it is capable of, because the adjective "rational" defines at least part of the capacities.
The problem with the AFLAFP argument isn't Premise 1 (although it can be defined better as you're attempting). The problem is Premise 2, which you're trying to address with coma example. The problem lies with the sloppy use of "capable" (or "does not have those capacities"). Premise 2 is confusing the difference between have a capacity (deriving from one's nature) and having the physical ability to express it. [Thus I would shy away from the word capacity in a debate].
Human beings are rational by nature and thus all have the capacity for use of reason. But some are physical impeded from expressing it either temporarily or permanently. The AFLAFP is asserting that sentience can be *acquired* by someone or something. And all the Sci-Fi movies that portray computers becoming sentient don't help.
It is helpful to lead people through Plato's argument for existence of the soul. And better yet start by calling the soul a non-material component. Better Plato, than Aquinas who adopts it, because Plato can't be discredited by association with Christianity. Now, atheists don't like that kind of argument because it's based solely on reason, and can't be empirically proved. That's a logical necessity. Material things can't manipulate non-material things.
You'll also have to confront neuroscience studies using brain scans. Some will try to say this proves that our rationality resides solely in the brain. However, point out the distinction between cause and effect. Additionally that the imagination and memory ARE material faculties of the intellect and do reside in the brain. What these scans are detecting are the effects of the intellect in manipulating the imagination (in which images include all 5 senses not just visual images) and memory; the firing of neurons is not the cause of thought.
That's a start and just rough outline. Immersing yourself in scholastic philosophy and understanding the work on form, matter, substance, and accidents will give you a lot more ammunition. But most of will go over people's heads, because so few are properly trained in philosophy.
Useful also is pointing out that one of the proponents of AFLAFP is Peter Singer who argues that parents should be allowed post-natal abortion even up to 2 yrs of age. That can be pretty hard for someone of good will to defend.
Hmmm.... I disagree.
DeleteDefining a "person" as a member of a rational species DOES make a observation about capabilities, but it is an observation made of the species - not of the individual. That is the key distinction. That is where premise 1 gets it wrong.
A child in-utero might be not be personally rational yet, but it is a potential lodged in his/her nature. And that nature is the nature of a human.
I concur that the first objective is to properly define "person", but did not read your Premise 1 as being specific to an individual. As far as defining a person, though, I'd direct you here http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11726a.htm
Delete"A child in-utero might be not be personally rational yet, but it is a potential lodged in his/her nature. And that nature is the nature of a human. "
This is really problematic language because you've already conceded Premise 2 regardless of how you define Premise 1. As soon as you concede that the child can at any moment NOT yet be rational, then all you're left with is haggling over when in development abortion ceases to be moral. And for Singer, et al, that moment is well after birth.
It is essential that you recognize that the fetus is rational from conception, that is, when it is distinctly an individual, and an individual that has human nature. Once you concede only potentiality rather than actuality, you've lost the debate.
Now, clever, knowledgeable opponents will point out that Aquinas taught that ensoulment doesn't occur until about 2 weeks into pregnancy. The counter is to point out that he was relying on erroneous medical knowledge that failed to understand what the woman is contributing.
It should also be noted that the Church has never officially declared that ensoulment occurs at the moment of conception (nor that it doesn't), and as I recall from the applicable recent documents does use reasoning like yours about potential. I find it unsustainable to argue for later ensoulment because the soul is the form of the body, animating it and organizing it. No soul; no complete human nature; no person; and you've lost the debate. You're left arguing about when "rationality" is acquired. You also lose the debate over how supposedly "brain dead" persons can be treated--ie organ harvesting prior to the moment of death, which is when the soul leaves the body.