Topic IX: Abortion - 3
Lecture 16
Argument 4: Potentialities
One way of formulating this fourth anti-abortion argument is as follows:
(1) All innocent organisms that have the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness thereby have a serious right to life.
(2) Any biologically human fetus, embryo, or zygote is itself an innocent organism that has the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.
Therefore:
(3) Any biologically human fetus, embryo, or zygote has a serious right to life.
In this argument, premise (2) is false, since some fetuses – such as anencephalic fetuses – have brains that are so defective that they can never support the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.
Here, however, I want to ignore that objection, and concentrate instead on premise (1).
My reason for doing so is that if premise (1) is true, one will be able to establish the following, very important conclusion:
(3*) Any biologically human fetus, embryo, or zygote that is neurologically normal has a serious right to life.
Let us consider, then, whether the following principle is true:
(1) All innocent organisms that have the potential to acquire the capacity for thought and self-consciousness thereby have a serious right to life.
Arguments in Support of an Affirmative Answer
Three main arguments have been offered for the view that potentialities can in themselves give something a right to life, or, at least, can make the destruction of something just as seriously wrong as the killing of a normal, innocent, adult human being.
I shall focus here on the one that seems to me most interesting, and most instructive.
It turns upon a consideration of the case of comatose individuals.
Affirmative Argument 1: Comas and Potentialities
This argument can be put as follows:
(1) It is not wrong to kill an adult human organism that has suffered upper brain death.
(2) It is wrong to kill a normal human being in a temporary coma.
(3) In the case of an organism whose upper brain has been destroyed, there is no potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.
(4) In the case of a normal human being in a temporary coma, by contrast, there is a potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.
(5) The difference described in (3) and (4) provides the best explanation of why it is wrong to kill a normal human being in a temporary coma, but not wrong to kill a human organism that has suffered upper brain death.
Therefore:
(6) The potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness is sufficient to give an entity a right to life.
There are a number of objections to this argument. Here I shall focus on the following two:
Objection 1: The conclusion entails unacceptable moral claims, and so is false.
Objection 2: There is a vastly superior account of why it is seriously wrong to kill a normal human being in a temporary coma, but not wrong to kill a human organism that has suffered upper brain death.
Objection 1
The first objection quickly emerges if one draws a distinction between what I shall refer to as fully active potentialities and passive potentialities:
X has a fully active potentiality for the acquisition of property P
means
All of the positive causal factors that are required for a process that would give rise to the possession of property P are present in X.
<> What is a positive causal factor?But if there were a table under the ball, the ball would not fall.
So the absence of a table is causally relevant, since the absence of a table is necessary if the ball is to fall.
But absences are not positive causal factors.
Next, consider the definition of a passive potentiality:
X has a passive potentiality for the acquisition of property P
means
There is something that could be done to X that would initiate a process that would give rise to the possession by X of property P.
Notice, now that in the case of a normal adult human being in a temporary coma, it does not matter whether the person will come out of the coma without assistance, or whether some medical intervention is needed for the person to recover.
The fact, for example, that the person could emerge from the coma only if an operation were performed to relieve pressure on the person’s brain would not make it permissible to kill the person.
The crucial point, in short, is this:
(*) What the case of a person in a temporary coma shows is that, to the extent that potentialities are relevant to an entity’s right to life, purely passive potentialities are just as relevant as fully active potentialities.
But, then, given that fact, if one asserts that an active potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness gives something a serious right to life, the same would have to be true for a purely passive potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.
This generates, however, wildly implausible consequences.
Consider, for example, an unfertilized human egg cell and a human spermatozoon lying next to one another.
The collection of molecules making up these two things has a passive potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.
It would then follow, if potentialities make it wrong to destroy something, that it would be wrong to destroy the unfertilized human egg cell and the human spermatozoon that are lying next to one another.
Or suppose that a chemical is discovered that when injected into the brain of a kitten will change its brain so that it will have the capacity for thought and self-consciousness.
Any kitten, before it is injected, will then have a passive potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness, so that it would follow that destroying any kitten would be seriously wrong.
Summing Up: Objection 1
A basic problem with the appeal to the case of a temporarily comatose person is that both passive potentialities and active potentialities are morally relevant, in the same way, and to the same extent.
The claim that an active potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness gives an entity a serious right to life would therefore entail, if the present argument were right, that a passive potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness also gives an entity a serious right to life.
But a passive potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness does not give an entity a serious right to life.
Accordingly, the case of a temporarily comatose person cannot show that an active potentiality for acquiring the capacity for thought and self-consciousness gives an entity a right to life.
Objection 2
The second objection is that there is a vastly superior account of why it is seriously wrong to kill a normal human being in a temporary coma, but not wrong to kill a human organism that has suffered upper brain death.
The key to the superior account involves noticing that, in the case of the comatose person, more is present than just potentialities, either active or passive, for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.
For such an individual's brain also contains the physical basis of his or her memories, beliefs, attitudes, and personality traits.
All of those things are present.
But it is precisely those sorts of states – memories, beliefs, attitudes, and personality traits – that are the ground of personal identity, and that make one the person one is.
In short, the states that make for personal identity are present in the brain of the comatose individual.
So what is present is not just a general potentiality for the existence of an individual who is capable of thought and self-consciousness.
There is also the potentiality for the continued existence of the very same person who enjoyed thought and self-consciousness in the past.
It is precisely this that makes the killing of a temporarily comatose human organism seriously wrong.
Arguments in Support of an Negative Answer
A number of arguments have been offered for the view that potentialities cannot in themselves give something a right to life, nor make the destruction of something just as seriously wrong as the killing of a normal, innocent, adult human being.
I shall focus here on two arguments that I think are both interesting and accessible.
Negative Argument 1: Mary Anne Warren’s Cloning Argument
In her article "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” Mary Anne Warren argues that if potentialities gave something a right to life, then every cell in one's body would have a right to life.
Her argument is as follows:
(1) Suppose that the nucleus of such a cell were to be transferred to an unfertilized human egg cell from which the nucleus had been removed.
(2) Then the resulting cell would develop in exactly the same way that a fertilized human egg cell develops.
(3) Accordingly, every cell in one’s body has the potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.
(4) If having the potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness gave something a right to life, then it would follow that every cell in one’s body had a right to life.
(5) The latter conclusion, however, is false.
(6) Therefore, the potentiality for acquiring the capacities for thought and self-consciousness does not give something a right to life.
The standard anti-abortionist response to Warren's argument appeals to the distinction between active potentialities and passive potentialities, defined above.
It involves the claim that while active potentialities give something a right to life, passive potentialities do not.
Many people seem to think that this response shows that Warren's argument is unsuccessful.
But to do so reflects a failure to notice the relevance of the case of a person in a temporary coma.
For, as we saw, in the case of a comatose individual, both active and passive potentialities count, and this provides support for the general conclusion that where potentialities are morally relevant, both active and passive potentialities are relevant.
The upshot is that an advocate of an anti-abortion view who appeals to potentialities is in the position of holding that while passive potentialities are relevant in the temporary-coma case, they are not relevant in the cell-nucleus case.
This, however, is a very ad hoc and implausible view.
In the absence of satisfactory support for this claim, Warren's objection stands.
Negative Argument 2: "Almost Active" Potentialities
The thrust of this argument is as follows.
First of all, a fertilized human egg cell on its own – for example, in a test tube – will not develop into a person.
Consequently, a fertilized human egg cell does not by itself have a fully active potentiality for giving rise to an entity with the capacities for thought and self-consciousness.
Its potentiality is, at best, an "almost active" one.
But then, secondly, consider the combination of an unfertilized human ovum lying next to a human spermatozoon.
This combination is almost comparable to an isolated fertilized human egg cell with respect to its "almost active" potentiality.
For, while in the former case, one needs to transfer the fertilized human egg cell to a uterus, in the latter case, one needs merely to combine the two things, and then transfer the result to a uterus.
Given the small difference with respect to what must be done to produce a fully active potentiality, can there really be, as the extreme anti-abortionist contends, a great moral gulf here?
This point can be reinforced, moreover, by two different comparisons.
Comparison 1
Compare
(1) A spermatozoon moving towards, and about to enter, an unfertilized ovum, both of them inside a uterus
with
(2) A fertilized human egg cell that is far removed from any human uterus.
Here it is surely the former situation that involves a more nearly active potentiality. More of the positive causal factors that are necessary to produce the relevant result are present
Hence if potentialities count to the extent that they are nearly active, then destruction of the potentiality involved in (1) should be morally worse than destruction of the potentiality involved in (2).
Destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (1), however, is not seriously wrong.
So neither is destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (2) seriously wrong.
Comparison 2
Compare
(1) A human spermatozoon together with an unfertilized human ovum, both of them inside an artificial womb that, first of all, will bring the two together, so that fertilization takes place, and then, secondly, that will care for the developing human being so that, nine months later, a perfectly healthy human baby will result
with
(2) A fertilized human egg cell that is far removed from any human uterus.
Once again, it is surely the former situation that involves a more nearly active potentiality.
Therefore if potentialities count to the extent that they are nearly active, then destruction of the potentiality involved in (1) – the artificial womb situation – should be morally worse than destruction of the potentiality involved in (2) – the isolated fertilized egg cell situation.
Destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (1), however, is not seriously wrong.
So neither is destruction of the potentiality involved in situation (2) seriously wrong.
Summing Up
We have examined what I think is the best argument for the view that general potentialities give something a right to life.
This is the argument that appeals to the case of a temporarily comatose individual.
The main problem with that argument is that it entails that active potentialities give something a right to life only if passive potentialities do so as well.
The latter, however, has unacceptable consequences, as we saw.
Accordingly, that argument cannot be sound.
On the other hand, there are a number of strong arguments for the view that general potentialities do not give something a right to life, two of which we considered:
(1) Mary Anne Warren’s cloning argument;
(2) The “almost active” potentialities argument.
There appears, then, to be excellent reason for concluding that general potentialities do not give something a right to life.
Overall Conclusion
We have seen that four important anti-abortion arguments appear untenable:
(1) The immaterial, rational mind or soul argument;
(2) The capacity for thought argument.
(3) The membership in the biologically defined species homo sapiens argument;
(4) The potentialities argument.