Abstract
We contend that both the defenders and critics of potentiality arguments in the abortion debate have failed to appreciate the morally relevant aspects of potential. Crucial for understanding the moral significance of potentiality is the fact that mindless organisms have interests but only in their healthy development. Unlike most kinds of organisms that develop minds, the operations of a healthy human mind are of a sophistication and range that bestows them with great value and enables their possessors to obtain unrivaled levels of well-being. Thus the frustration of those interests in healthy mental development is a great harm. Since the healthy development that is in the fetus’s interest can require all sorts of extrinsic interventions, the morally relevant potential isn’t limited to that which is intrinsic, active, normal or probable. And given those real or hypothesized non-human beings that are supposed to show the absurdity of protecting potential are not unhealthy if the mere possibility of their personhood isn’t actualized, then it follows that they don’t have any interests frustrated by that potential going untapped. So potentiality properly construed in terms of healthy development is not susceptible to reductio, unlike understandings of potentiality as metaphysical or physical possibility.
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Notes
- 1.
“The Magisterium has not expressly committed itself to an affirmation of a philosophical nature, but constantly reaffirms the moral condemnation of any kind of procured abortion … Thus the fruit of human generation, from the first moment of its existence, that is to say from the moment the zygote has formed, demands the unconditional respect that is morally due to the human being in his bodily and spiritual totality” (CDF 1987, Donum vitae, 2008 I:1).
- 2.
We are using “embryo” and “fetus” interchangeably.
- 3.
There is a difference between the absence of well-being on the one hand, and zero-level or low-level well-being on the other. We were all devoid of any level of well-being, even zero, before we existed and that explains why coming into existence isn’t a benefit. The comatose have zero or low well-being, unlike the non-existent and artifacts, mountains, etc., which have no well-being.
- 4.
We are not denying that there could be non-living but conscious entities which have interests and well-being.
- 5.
Even unhealthy fetuses and demented adults have a potential that accounts for their moral status. It may be that the harm is preempted or overdetermined by disease, but then the harm should be considered the combination of the disease and death, what McMahan (2002, 127–36) calls “Total Losses” and Neil Feit (2015) labels “Plural Harm.” Killing the incapacitated contributes to the total or plural harm that the patient suffers.
- 6.
We think it is safe to assume that for any theory of value to be taken seriously it must acknowledge that creatures with minds like ours have greater moral status than living things that are not capable of such a range of thoughts and emotions. The only controversy should be over whether there is considerable moral status in human beings before they actualize such traits.
- 7.
The design environment is the environment for which humans beings were made or selected. For example, humans are not unhealthy if they can’t breathe at high altitudes or underwater because they weren’t designed to breathe in such environments.
- 8.
If the healthy manifestation of the mental capacities that make human beings so valuable comes in degrees – not all mentally healthy humans possessing identical levels of intellectual and emotional qualities – it won’t matter for practical purposes. We are assuming a deontological framework where the great value of human beings protects them from being sacrificed to promote the interests of others. The deontological threshold is certainly met by any human being’s capacity and interest in healthy development.
- 9.
Let us dispel some possible misunderstandings of our claim that all organisms have an interest in the flourishing that accompanies healthy development. Some cases of disease are beneficial malfunctions, but this doesn’t undermine our thesis. Becoming infected with cowpox during a smallpox epidemic still serves our overall interest in health. Likewise, even if it would be good for a very sick patient in great distress to get another, less painful disease like pneumonia and die sooner from it, that isn’t a reason to say the person lacks an interest in total health, freedom from pneumonia and whatever other disease they’re suffering or freedom from coxpow and smallpox. However, conscious beings may benefit from some diseases and not just because these later increase their overall health. Doctor-prescribed bed-rest during an illness that perhaps prevents a worse pathology may not only keep someone alive, but it may enable them to find their true vocation and love. The conscious can come to acquire interests that override their prima facie interest in health, such as when being bedridden enables them to discover the joys of philosophy or meet and marry a doctor or nurse. Supporting the view that a persisting interest is being overridden, rather than absent, is that any benefits from disease still necessarily depend upon the presence of some health, e.g., proper mental functioning. So their flourishing still has health as a necessary constituent. We have provided a more detailed account about scenarios where it appears diseases are beneficial elsewhere (Hershenov and Hershenov 2016)
- 10.
Even if the totipotency of early embryonic cells was selected to provide backup in case the others cells fail, that wouldn’t give us a duty to develop such potential in the absence of such cellular failure.
- 11.
While philosophers may differ about which conception of proper function is correct, they tend to agree about which creatures are healthy. All we need to run our argument is a near consensus about health, in particular, mental health. Different theories of proper function could converge upon what sort of mental operations are healthy and it is in these mental features that our great value is to be found.
- 12.
We are assuming that the rare serum goes to the unhealthy human being regardless of whether there are other morally relevant factors like its standing in a special relationship to other valuable beings desiring its treatment. So the friendless orphan with no living relatives should have priority for treatment over a kitten adored by its human owners.
- 13.
The four-dimensionalist believes persons are extended in time as well as space. This makes persons roughly akin to a play with earlier and later acts. The play is not wholly present at any moment. The three-dimensionalist denies the existence of such temporal parts or stages and insists that we are wholly present at each moment we exist (Sider 2001).
- 14.
For instance, Chris Tollefsen and Robert George (2008, p. 61) write “…embryos clearly cannot yet think, choose and speak. Nor are they (yet) self-conscious or even sentient. Were this to mean that embryos were not the same kind of beings as the readers and authors of this book, that they were not persons, then it would be difficult to see why they should be accorded the same moral respect that we authors and readers believe we are entitled to. There would be no obvious reason why they should not be destroyed for the sake of beings who really are persons.”
- 15.
If fetuses are to be morally distinguished from newborns then it will be on the extrinsic grounds that the newborn is a burden in the way the fetus is not. But we can imagine cases of isolated new mothers who have no earlier abortion options and presently have no adoption option or alternative to breast-feeding. So their choice is between killing or letting their newborn die, or allowing the newborn to use their body to nurse and care for it around the clock. It would be wrong for them to kill or allow the child to die who is as burdensome as a fetus. Hershenov (2001) offers further arguments that one must take on burdens equivalent to supporting Thomson’s famous violinist.
- 16.
We mean the indeterminacy to be noticed.
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Hershenov, D., Hershenov, R. (2017). The Potential of Potentiality Arguments. In: Eberl, J. (eds) Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine(), vol 127. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55766-3_4
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