Case 1:
Consider a possible world which is similar to ours except for the rate at which our counterparts develop into persons. Otherwise, the rate of biological development is not much different, the human counterparts are born on average 9 months after conception too. But they are conscious, thinking, and reasoning at a much higher level, much sooner. They are, in short, persons much sooner in something like the textbook sense of ‘person’. Suppose they are textbook persons within a week of conception. Here’s what’s not credible: it is permissible to terminate a textbook person so long as you do so before a week has elapsed. It is just not credible that, on day 5.99999 the being has no particular value, but on day 6 it has great value.
Case 2:
But suppose you don’t find that incredible. Consider a world in which it takes 30 seconds to develop into a textbook person. It’s not credible that I had no moral value .00002 seconds ago, and now I have great moral value. The moral difference in you is negligible over .002 seconds.
Case 3:
If you find it incredible that it is permissible to terminate the would-be textbook person in case (1) or case (2), then you should find it incredible that it is permissible to terminate an actual would-be textbook person. Even if you suppose that the predicate ‘being a person’ is vague, it is true that, at some level of vagueness, a being moves from not definitely all the way up a textbook person to definitely all the way up texbook person in an instant. In an instant, the being moves from being the sort of thing that has hardly any value to the kind of thing that you cannot terminate with doing an extreme moral wrong. But it cannot be true that the natural properties you acquire in a single instant are sufficient to make that great of a moral difference.
This seems to be set on a binary point where termination suddenly goes from acceptable to unacceptable rather than going from a scale of acceptable, to slightly less acceptable, all the way through to unacceptable.
I'm not at all well read on the literature of persons and personhood, but does it not allow for degrees?.
My intuition is that termination is a balancing act between the rights of the mother and the rights of the unborn, which become more important as the unborn becomes more of a person and the need for the mother's continued involvement decreases.
This seems to be set on a binary point where termination suddenly goes from acceptable to unacceptable rather than going from a scale of acceptable, to slightly less acceptable, all the way through to unacceptable.
Yes it does, since (for instance) an indeterminate or borderline right to life is not a right to life. It is simply a case in which no decision has been made about it's being proper or not to say of the being that it has a right to life.
Mike,
That's a really original way of putting the gradual development argument.
But I don't have the same intuitions about time as you do. It seems to me that what is relevant for various morally relevant purposes isn't clock time, but "internal time". Imagine a being that does everything twice as fast as we do--processes information, thinks, moves, etc. My intuition is that half a clock-minute of pain for it equals in disutility one clock-minute of equivalent pain for us. The faster the internal processes of a critter are, the more internal time passes in a unit of clock time. Moreover, for ethical purposes, the internal processes tied to thought, perception and agency seem to be the relevant ones for defining the internal clock rate.
So, in terms of the ethically-relevant clock rate, it seems plausible that in Cases 1 and 2, the critters develop into textbook-persons at pretty much the same rate as we do. What is different are the less ethically relevant portions of the biological development clock rate and the ethically irrelevant external clock rate. So if I were committed to fetuses not having rights, I would bite the bullet on Cases 1 and 2 without a further qualm, I think.
Still, I think there is a way in which your cases may help focus one on the weirdness of thinking that an individual develops into a rights-possessor.
Here may be another way to use your examples. I think it ought to be a puzzle to the pro-choicer why it is that we have rights when we're deeply asleep and have only a potentiality for textbook-person activity. Sleepers seem to be in the same boat as the fetus who also has a potentiality for textbook-person activity. One distinction someone might make is that a sleeper's potentiality for textbook-person activity can be very quickly actuated, often within minutes, and sometimes seconds, while a fetus will take at least a year and a half until textbook-person activity (I assume textbook-person activity starts at around 1.5 years of age; though I once had a colleague who thought it started much later--he thought you needed to be able to speak with embedded conditionals to be a person). But your examples nicely show that this way of making the distinction is bogus, because we could imagine a fetus whose development was sped up. (That said, I don't the pro-choicer should distinguish the sleeper from the fetus by amount of time 'til actuation. Instead the pro-choicer should distinguish in terms of first and second potentiality. However, this requires an argument that second potentiality is ethically significant while first is not. I think there is pretty much a continuum between first and second potentiality.)
In Case 3, what do you mean by "in an instant"? Do you mean "in a very short amount of time", or are you assuming a discrete theory of time.
Pilchard:
Indeed, it has seemed weird to me to think that rights develop gradually, so one gets more and more of the right (here I am using "right" as a mass noun--it is awkward even to express this view!) to be balanced, and then suddenly there is a threshold crossed, past which one's right becomes equal to every other normal adult's.
Mike:
Another thought. Start with this thought experiment. There is a sperm and an egg at t0. Then over a period of one Planck time, God miraculously turns the sperm and egg into an adult human. So, at t0, we have nothing with rights, and a Planck time later we have something with rights. There is nothing absurd here. The difference in the fetus case is that the fetus is the same entity as the later rights-bearer (this is controversial, but defensible; Olson's arguments for animalism are one way to go), while the sperm and egg are not the same entity (in fact, they aren't an entity at all, I think) as the later rights-bearer. However, I am not sure that the pro-choicer thinks that this difference between my miracle case and your Case 2 is that significant--she'll say that in both cases, there are definitely no rights at all, and a femtosecond later there definitely are rights.
In Case 3, what do you mean by "in an instant"? Do you mean "in a very short amount of time", or are you assuming a discrete theory of time.
I think you might be right about case (1) and (2), so I don't know what explains my intuitions about them. I think it is neither time nor development that matters here, but the rate of growth. In case (3) there is some extremely small degree of natural development D such that, for each being at development T, T + D yields a full rights bearer and T - D yields a rights non-bearer. This cannot be right. My moral properties supervene on my natural properties, but it cannot be true that a rights non-bearer differs so insignificantly in natural properties from a full rights bearer. I suppose the move would be to vague rights, but that won't help, either. It amounts to observing that there are borderline rights bearers. But a borderline rights bearer is not a rights bearer--as the opposition has been keen to point out--a near person is not a person.
I wonder how far you could take this argument. It seems as though you would also have to accept that a fused sperm and ovum cannot suddenly have greater moral value than they had a moment before. And if there's value in a sperm being inside an egg, why not before? Could it be morally acceptable to prevent a sperm from entering an egg, but not acceptable to prevent its fusion with the ovum? If not, then where along the causal chain would it be morally acceptable to take steps to prevent a person's existence?
Perhaps there's something about gametes that makes them constitute a "being" only when they're interacting in some specific way. I find it strange, though, to think that all the pieces of a being could exist in the form of eggs and sperm, but their moral value is contingent on them being in close proximity.
Though I can see a certain appeal, I don't take you to be arguing that we have a positive obligation to have sex at every instant. So what am I missing?
I wonder how far you could take this argument. It seems as though you would also have to accept that a fused sperm and ovum cannot suddenly have greater moral value than they had a moment before
What I would say is that neither a fused sperm-ovum nor an unfused one is a textbook person. My main concern is that, IF you think being a textbook person is what matters to your moral standing, then you have this (I think, insurmountable) problem. The problem is that human beings do not develop natural properties rapidly and moral properties supervene on natural properties (for those who think textbook personhood matters). So, a very minor change in natural properties is going to subvene a major change in moral status. That cannot be true. So, it is a mistake (I conclude) ot think that personhood underwrites moral standing. I've given other argument with the same conclusion on PB.
I am missing something. I take it that there is a clear demarcation between a 'textbook person' and a 'non-textbook person' such that we can identify one from the other (at least definitionally). For example, we might simply say that a 'textbook person' has characteristics a, b, c, and d. It might well be the case that the characteristics a, b, and c are a skill set and the characteristic d happens to be a property that a, b, an c, are somehow 'attached' to it such that we have never experienced a, b, and c absent d. I take it that it is wrong to kill a 'textbook person' all other things being equal and not wrong to kill a 'non-textbook person' all other things being equal. If we know that it take a certain amount of time for d to develop then it would seem permissible to kill that object up to the point that d was present. There might be difficulties identifying the status of d between times 5.9 and 6, but certainly not much of a problem between 1 and 6.
I am missing something. I take it that there is a clear demarcation between a 'textbook person' and a 'non-textbook person' such that we can identify one from the other
John,
There is the metaphysical question about what properties make something a textbook person, and there's the epistemological question about whether we could easily identify one. I say nothing about the epistemological question. I do say that the predicates that figure in the standard analysis of x is a person are vague. There are indeterminate persons. You might argue that there are correspondingly indeterminate rights. But indeterminiate rights are not rights, or not as far as I can see. So it looks as though the difference between a person and non-person will be some negligible difference in natural properties (on which moral properties supervene). But that can't be right. A minor difference in, say, one's awareness or consciousness, cannot counterfactually support the full profile of individual rights. That's the argument.
Mike:
"My main concern is that, IF you think being a textbook person is what matters to your moral standing, then you have this (I think, insurmountable) problem. The problem is that human beings do not develop natural properties rapidly and moral properties supervene on natural properties (for those who think textbook personhood matters). So, a very minor change in natural properties is going to subvene a major change in moral status. That cannot be true."
The argument seems to apply against any position on which moral standing supervenes on natural properties. Am I right? For natural properties develop gradually, and so there will always be borderline cases.
So the conclusion of the argument is, more generally, that moral standing does not supervene on natural properties.
I am interested in where you take this conclusion. I see three plausible directions (they can be combined, too).
Direction 1: Dualism: What undergirds moral standing is a non-natural change.
Direction 2: Divine command theory: What undergirds moral standing is an extrinsic property, such as being such that God has willed that one not be killed.
Direction 3: Existence: Existence is not a natural property, because existence is not a property. Humans are beings which have the property that their moral standing supervenes on their existence. It is an essential property of them that they have moral standing. Now you still have to say something about the apparent gradualness of human beings coming into existence. There are two options: either human beings come into existence sharply or do so gradually. The sharp horn probably requires dualism (at least of the Aristotelian variety). The unsharp horn means that you can have locations in spacetime where it is vague whether there is already a being with moral standing there. The vagueness in moral standing on this view exactly corresponds with the vagueness in existence. If I am a human being, then it may be vague whether I exist at t0, but it is definite that whenever I exist, I have moral standing. One might even be able to say: there is no property of vague moral standing, because any being that has moral standing has it definitely, but it is vague whether such a being exists in a spacetime location or not.
My own preference is for combining Direction 1 with the sharp horn of Direction 3.
But the point I want to make is that while the argument is persuasive, getting out of considerations tied to the argument will be challenging for anybody.
The textbook-person view could respond as follows. It's not that each thing in the indeterminate realm has indeterminate rights but that for each thing in that realm it's indeterminate whether it has rights. So nothing has indeterminate rights, whatever that means. There's just no fact of the matter whether these things in the indeterminate realm have genuine, full-blown rights.
Of course, I think that plays into your hands anyway, because once you say that then the epistemological problem rears its head, and you still can't say truly that it doesn't have rights, and you can't identify where the point is that it gets the rights.
It's for this general kind of reason that I think moral status can't have anything to do with accidental properties but must be grounded in some more basic kinds.
Alex, I don't think the argument applies to all natural properties, just accidental ones. You don't acquire essential properties gradually, because you're not around before they're present. If the essential properties take time to accrue, then this sort of argument is an argument against essential properties, but I'm not sure we should think essential properties take time to accrue. What takes time to accrue would be natural properties that correlate with essential properties, perhaps.
Jeremy:
You're right. My bad.
If the essential properties take time to accrue, then this sort of argument is an argument against essential properties
It's an interesting question whether there are vague essential properties. Why wouldn't there be? Kripke allows that your cat is not apriori not a robot. And he would certainly say that my cat is a robot only if it is essentially a robot. But no doubt 'being a robot' is vague. So some essential properties are vague. But then we have the same problem, only with two objects. Take my cat C prior to 'having acquired' the essential property of being a robot (obviously C can't acquire that without ceasing to be C). C is essentially not a robot. C' is a robot, but only imperceptibly different from C. If robothood were a morally significant property, then C and C' would differ very much in moral standing. But they shouldn't.
Mike
Thanks. I do take your point that there is a problem if we focus on gradation in so far as clearly being able to make any discernible distinction between a being a 5.999 and 6.0. But there need be no similar problem between a being a 1.0 and 6.0. Surely, we can distinguish between a pile of sand and no pile of sand even if we cannot agree on how many grains of sand it takes to be a pile. It seems to me that focusing on issues regarding gradation leads to moral skepticism across more moral perspectives then simply those that rely on some concept of personhood.
It seems to me that focusing on issues regarding gradation leads to moral skepticism across more moral perspectives then simply those that rely on some concept of personhood
It might, but I'm not arguing for a moral skepticism. What I take as conceded is that human beings have rights. What I take as contested is whether newborns/fetuses have rights. Those who support the position that fetuses do not have rights and normal adult humans do offer us textbook personhood as a basis for the distinction. Fetuses are textbook non-persons, normal adult humans are textbook persons. But textbook personhood regards it as a platitude that being a person supervenes on ones natural properties. But I argue that it cannot be the possession of some set of natural properties that gives something moral standing (including a broad set of moral rights). I'm still taking as conceded that human beings are persons in the moral sense. What then? Either the fact that fetuses lack certain natural properties that normal adult human beings possess cannot support the argument that fetuses are not persons, OR, natural properties do subvene personhood, but personhood does not confer any special moral status on those who possess it. Either way we have no principled basis for the weighty moral distinction drawn between fetuses and normal adult humans.
"I'm still taking as conceded that human beings are persons in the moral sense."
Is this not what is contentious? One can maintain that a human embryo is a human being, but not a person. I agree with you that focusing on gradation presents a problem for determining when a human being becomes a person, but it does not follow that it is always the case that we cannot make such a determination. Using the criteria you listed in your thought experiment, if we concede that a textbook person is conscious, thinking, and reasoning, it seems clear that a human embryo lacks these properties and would therefore not be a textbook person. This is true even when we concede that it is difficult to locate the exact time at which a non-person becomes a person. My point is that there are many examples of when it is possible to know that a being either possesses or lacks the properties necessary for personhood, even though we may not know at what point in time it became a person if it became one. This point is reasonable even if the terms describing the properties are vague, as you suggest they are. Therefore it seems possible to have a principled basis for making a distinction using the properties of personhood (whatever they might be) even though we may not always be certain as to when that principled distinction applies.