Love, infants and personhood

Since the work of Mary Anne Warren, the following is accepted by many pro-choice philosophers:

1. CogSkill: Personhood requires developed and complex cognitive skills, of a sort that fetuses lack, and that are had by no mammals other than humans or at most are had by humans, and some other primates and/or cetaceans.

The following view is also held by a number of people, some pro-choice and some pro-life:

2. NonStage: When a person comes into existence, that person is a new entity that comes into existence.

NonStage is the denial of a view on which personhood is a stage property, like being an adolescent, a property that an entity comes to have at a particular stage of development. If NonStage is right, then I did not exist prior to being a person. Thus, if my existence began at conception, and NonStage is true, then I was a person from conception. On the other hand, if CogSkill is true, then NonStage implies that we who are persons did not exist as fetuses. CogSkill blocks the pro-life argument that fetuses are persons and hence ought not be killed. NonStage as combined with CogSkill blocks the pro-life argument that even if fetuses aren't persons, killing them deprives them of a future existence as a person, and hence is as bad as killing persons (I've defended this argument for a while; an expanded defense is here).

I will argue that the combination of CogSkill and NonStage is not a tenable view. Thus, if CogSkill is true, personhood is a stage property, and if NonStage is true, CogSkill is false.

So for a reductio ad absurdum assume CogSkill and NonStage, and consider Sally, a normal early human infant of three months of age, with a normal loving mother, Martha. Sally's cognitive skills are rather less developed than that of a normal adult dog. By CogSkill, since dogs don't have the cognitive skills needed for personhood, neither does Sally. (This is not at all a controversial conclusion among philosophers who accept CogSkill.)

Martha loves Sally, and does so quite appropriately, and indeed shold do so: it would be absurd to deny that mothers should love their babies.[note 1] But now observe an odd thing if NonStage is also true. When personhood shows up, a new entity comes into existence. And Martha, we may suppose, loves that entity, and does so appropriately, too. Call this entity "Sally₂". There are now two possibilities. Either Sally ceases to exist when Sally₂ comes into existence, or Sally continues to exist alongside Sally₂, or more precisely in exactly the same place as Sally₂ exists.

Suppose Sally ceases to exist when Sally₂ comes into existence. This is absurd. Then Martha ought to mourn Sally's demise when personhood comes into existence, and mourn it to a degree proportional to her strength of love for Sally. But while some regret for the passing of infancy may be appropriate, a mourning proportionate to the love is not appropriate. Moreover, even worse, Martha's love for Sally would give her reason to administer to Sally a drug that would prevent Sally from developing the skills needed for personhood. For personhood means the end of Sally's life on the hypothesis in question, and so Martha would be saving Sally's life by giving her this drug. And that's a horrific conclusion. In any case, I think none of the philosophers who accept CogSkill and NonStage think that Sally ceases to exist.

The remaining option for the defender of CogSkill and NonStage is that Sally continues to exist alongside Sally₂. Now, Martha should now have a maternal love for Sally₂. But she should surely also continue too love Sally. After all, parental love should be unconditional. Besides, nothing happened to Sally to make her any less lovable. On the contrary, surely Sally is more lovable, given that she now supports the personal activity of Sally₂.

So Martha will now need to love two living beings—Sally and Sally₂—with a maternal love. And that is absurd. When complex intellectual skills are gained, parents don't come to love a new living being—they love the same child, but now have additional reasons for loving that child.

If there are two living beings to love after the attainment of personhood, and only one before, then it follows that, all other things being equal, the wellbeing of a baby after the attainment of personhood should count for at least twice as much as the wellbeing of a baby prior to the attainment of personhood. And that doesn't seem right at all.

So we have reason to reject the conjunction of CogSkills with NonStage.