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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Many people are strongly opposed to the intentional destruction of human embryos, whether it be for purposes scientific, reproductive, or other. And it is not uncommon for such people to argue against the destruction of human embryos by invoking the claim that the destruction of human embryos is morally on par with killing the following humans: (A) the standard infant, (B) the suicidal teenager, (C) the temporarily comatose individual, and (D) the standard adult. I argue here that this claim is false and do so as follows. First, I provide an account of the prima facie wrongness of killing individuals (A) – (D). Briefly, I contend that individuals (A) – (D) have a certain property in common, that of having a future of value. An individual who has a future of value has the potential to (i) value goods of consciousness when he will (or would) experience them and (ii) do so as a psychologically continuous individual.
1 By ‘embryo’ I mean the prefoetal product of conception from implantation through the eighth week of development.
2 ‘Future of value’ is borrowed from Don Marquis (see Marquis, D. ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ in Ethics in Practice, LaFollette, H. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2002), 83–94.Google Scholar My analysis of ‘future of value’ differs from Marquis's in that mine includes (ii) while Marquis's does not.
3 As will be discussed in greater detail below, first-order potential involves two temporally successive potential-actual relations: the potential to actualize in a certain way and, once actualized thus, the potential to actualize in yet another way. Second-order potential involves the second of the two temporally successive potential-actual relations constitutive of first-order potential. This construal of first-and second-order potential is developed by Aristotle in Book Nine of the Metaphysics.
4 See McMahan, Jeff The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002),CrossRefGoogle Scholar 270ff.
5 Marquis, ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ 86-7. For a more comprehensive summary of Marquis's argument against abortion — as well as a formidable rebuttal to it — see Boonin, David A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2003), 56–85.Google Scholar I have borrowed an element of Boonin's style of presentation, specifically, the use of capital letters to refer to the individuals in question.
6 Marquis, ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ 86Google Scholar
7 Marquis, ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ 87Google Scholar
8 Marquis, ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ 87Google Scholar
9 Marquis, ‘An Argument that Abortion is Immoral,’ 83.Google Scholar It should be noted that, since publication of Marquis's seminal article on abortion, he has changed his position slightly. In a recent article, Marquis has argued that the standard embryo does not have a future of value, and does so on the grounds of personal identity. Specifically, he contends that human embryos have a future of value only if they are early phases of the individuals we now are, and that human embryos are not early phases of the individuals we now are. Thus, he no longer holds that the standard embryo possesses a future of value as late as two weeks after conception. However, Marquis's new position on the moral status of the standard embryo in no way affects my critique of Marquis's analysis of ‘future of value,’ since his analysis remains unchanged in this latest article, and his conclusion is arrived at via personal identity and not via psychological continuity as a valuable-making property of futures. See Marquis, D. ‘The Moral-Principle Objection to Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research,’ in Metaphilosophy 38. 2-3 (April 2007): 190–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 41Google Scholar
11 ‘Potential’ will be understood here in the following way: ‘An entity's potential is simply what it can become through the full range of possible transformations that would be identity-preserving’ (McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 317Google Scholar).
12 Examples of psychological states include sensations, propositional attitudes (beliefs, hopes, fears, wishes, and so on), character traits, emotions, decisions, intentions, and more.
13 For example, valuing things involves the capacity for taking an interest in things, and the capacity for taking an interest in things involves the capacity for desiring things. See Tooley, Michael Abortion and Infanticide (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), 104–6.Google Scholar
14 The view that I am about to develop and defend is similar to Peter McInerney's insofar as both focus on the ways in which standard embryos and standard adult human beings are related to their futures, and both allege that standard embryos and standard adult human beings are related to their futures in different ways. However, my position is distinct from McInerney's in numerous and important ways. The two most important ways are as follows. First, and most importantly, though McInerney correctly observes that standard embryos and standard adult human beings are related to their futures in different ways, he fails to demonstrate that this difference entails that the standard embryo lacks a future of value. Specifically, he fails to justify two of the central claims that I have attempted to justify in my paper: (1) that psychological continuity is a valuable-making property of our futures (i.e., that, all else being equal, one's future is more valuable if it contains psychological continuity than if it does not) and (2) that psychological continuity should be included among the valuable-making properties constitutive of what we're calling a ‘future of value’ (i.e., that it is the kind of valuable-making property such that one's death poses no non-negligibly greater misfortune than one's continued existence as a psychologically discontinuous individual). In short, that the standard embryo and the standard adult human being are related to their futures in different ways is a nonethical fact; that this difference entails that the standard embryo lacks the moral-status-conferring property of having a future of value must be supported by considerations of what makes our futures valuable (i.e., considerations of value). The latter is what I do in my paper while McInerney does not. See P. McInerney, ‘Does a Fetus Already Have a Future-Like-Oursヨ’ in The Abortion Controversy, 2nd ed., L. Pojman and F. Beckwith, eds. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth 1998), 357-61.
15 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 39. For more on psychological continuity, see Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985), 206ff.
16 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 39Google Scholar
17 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 50Google Scholar
18 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 50Google Scholar
19 The following demonstration involves appealing to a series of thought experiments, as is the norm for many philosophers involved in the debate on the ethics of killing, particularly those philosophers, acknowledged in the introduction of this paper, who have influenced me so much. To be sure, some philosophers do not value the use of such experiments very much, for they question to what extent we can rely on — or even determine what are — our intuitions in these cases. And though I can sympathize with this attitude to an extent, I think there are good reasons nonetheless to rely on such experiments, not the least of which is that such are part and parcel of the method of reflective equilibrium, a method in ethics for which, as Boonin writes, ‘there seems to be no plausible alternative’ (Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 12Google Scholar). Elsewhere, I defend the view that the method of reflective equilibrium requires us to make use of such thought experiments (see Lovering, R. ‘Mary Anne Warren on “Full” Moral Status,’ in Southern Journal of Philosophy 42.4 (2004): 509–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
20 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 78Google Scholar
21 This is a modified version of a thought experiment introduced by Bernard Williams and discussed by McMahan.
22 It's noteworthy that there are real cases in which individuals live in a state comparable to the one described here. See McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 76-7.
23 Consider, for example, the notable lack of memories that believers in the doctrine of reincarnation have about their former lives.
24 This is adapted from a case introduced by Bernard Williams. See B., Williams ‘The Self and the Future,’ in Personal Identity, Martin, R. and Barresi, J. eds. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2002), 80–1.Google Scholar
25 See Williams, ‘The Self and the Future,’ 80-1.
26 For example, see Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 229ff.Google Scholar
27 See Sutherland, Stuart Irrationality: Why We Don't Think Straight (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 1994).Google Scholar
28 Doka, Kenneth ‘Grief and Dementia,’ in Living with Grief: Alzheimer's Disease (Washington, DC: Hospice Foundation of America 2004), ch. 10, 3–4.Google Scholar
29 There is ample evidence — behavioral, neurophysiological, and conceptual — that the standard infant possesses this second-order potential as well. See Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 83;Google Scholar McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 46;Google Scholar Regan, Tom The Case for Animal Rights (Berkeley: University of California Press 1983), 45;Google Scholar and Morowitz, Harold and Trefil, James The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1992).Google Scholar
30 Again, this distinction is fleshed out by Aristotle in Book Nine of the Metaphysics.
31 It is generally held that a functioning cerebral cortex isn't present before the 25th week of gestation. See Morowitz's and Trefil's The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy. To be sure, unorganized electrical activity has been detected in the brain stems of embryos between 6 and 8 weeks gestation. But, as Boonin writes, ‘If the electrical activity in the brain is random and unorganized, then we can infer very little about what is going on in the brain from it. Every cell in the human body exhibits some degree of electrical activity, and the fact that an electrical signal can be detected from the brain cells in this sense show merely that they are alive’ (Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 106-7). Moreover, the relation between consciousness and a functioning cerebral cortex is such that ‘without the latter, we do not have the former’ (Boonin, A Defense of Abortion, 103Google Scholar).
32 The following is a description of what somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) involves: ‘In genetics and developmental biology, SCNT is a laboratory technique for creating an ovum with a donor nucleus … In SCNT the nucleus, which contains the organism's DNA, of a somatic cell (a body cell other than a sperm or egg cell) is removed and the rest of the cell discarded. At the same time, the nucleus of an egg cell is removed. The nucleus of the somatic cell is then inserted into the enucleated egg cell. After being inserted into the egg, the somatic cell nucleus is reprogrammed by the host cell. The egg, now containing the nucleus of a somatic cell, is stimulated with a shock and will begin to divide. After many mitotic divisions in culture, this single cell forms a blastocyst (an early stage embryo with about 100 cells) with almost identical DNA to the original organism.’ http://www. answers.com/main/ntqueryヨs=somatic+cell+nuclear+transfer&gwp=13
33 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 312Google Scholar
34 See McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 315Google Scholarff. Moreover, it's not even clear that this distinction is tenable as it turns on the notion of thing's ‘normal environment’ and delineating what a thing's normal environment has proven to be rather difficult. See Reiman, Jeff Abortion and the Ways We Value Life (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield 1999), 65Google Scholar and McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 312ff.Google Scholar
35 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 316.Google Scholar In addition to this argument, Michael Tooley has very recently argued — successfully, by my lights — that, to the extent that potentialities are relevant to an entity's right to life, purely extrinsic potentialities are just as relevant as intrinsic potentialities. See Tooley, Michael et al., Abortion: Three Perspectives (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press 2009), 38ff.Google Scholar
36 Before moving on, a brief caveat: Alfonso Gómez-Lobo has argued that somatic cells that undergo SCNT do not survive SCNT — specifically, that the identity relation between pre-SCNT cells and the post-SCNT cells does not obtain. From this he infers that any potential the original somatic cell may have had before it underwent SCNT is likewise destroyed by SCNT. If he is correct about this, then somatic cells involved in SCNT do not the have extrinsic first-order potential for psychological continuity. However, it's not clear that the identity relation between pre-SCNT cells and the post-SCNT cells fails to obtain, as Gómez-Lobo assumes. Specifically, Gomez-Lobo assumes that preservation of the nucleus is insufficient for the preservation of somatic-cell identity. But it's far from clear that this is the case. To motivate this point, consider the case of personal identity. When it comes to preserving personal identity, we tend to think that much of the human organism can be destroyed — arms, legs, ears, eyes, etc. — without thereby losing personal identity. Indeed, many philosophers think that all that's needed for the preservation of personal identity is preservation of the upper brain. With this in mind, for all we know, mere preservation of the nucleus of a given somatic cell is sufficient for the identity relation to obtain. For this to be clear one way or the other, we must establish necessary and sufficient conditions for somatic-cell identity, something that, to my knowledge, has yet to be done. And until this is done, we cannot say with confidence whether the identity relation between pre-SCNT cells and the post-SCNT cells fails to obtain. See Gómez-Lobo, A. ‘Individuality and Human Beginnings: A Reply to David DeGrazia,’ Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 35.3 (Fall 2007): 461ff.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
37 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 304Google Scholar
38 McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, 308-9
39 I am very grateful for the financial support I received from the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University to work on this paper as well as the comments I received from Paul Studtmann, the editor at the Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and anonymous referees.