The essentiality of dignity

Start with this:

1. Dignity is an essential property of anything that has it.

2. Necessarily, something has dignity if and only if it is a person.

3. Therefore, personhood is an essential property of anything that has it.

Now, suppose the standard philosophical pro-choice view that

4. Personhood consists in developed sophisticated cognitive faculties of the sort that fetuses and newborns lack but typical toddlers have.

Consider a newborn, Alice. By (4) Alice is not a person, but if she grows up into a typical toddler, that toddler will be a person. By (3), however, we cannot say that Alice will have become that person, since personhood is an essential property, and one cannot gain essential properties—either you necessarily have them or you necessarily lack them.

Call the toddler person “Alicia”. Then Alice is a different individual from Alicia.

So, what happens to Alice once we get to Alicia? Either Alice perishes or where Alicia is, there is Alice co-located with her.

Let’s suppose first the co-location option. We then have two conscious beings, Alice and Alicia, feeling the same things with the same brain, one (Alice) older than the other. We have standard and well-known problems with this absurd position (e.g., how does Alicia know that she is a person rather than just being an ex-fetus?).

But the option that Alice perishes when Alicia comes on the scene is also very strange. For even though Alice is not a person, it is obviously appropriate that Alice’s parents love for and care for her deeply. But if they love for and care for her deeply, they will have significant moral reason to prevent her from perishing. Therefore, they will have significant moral reason to give Alice drugs to arrest her intellectual development at a pre-personhood stage, to ensure that Alice does not perish. But this is a truly abhorrent conclusion!

Thus, we get absurdities from (3) and (4). This means that the pro-choice thinker who accepts (4) will have to reject (3). And they generally do so. This in turn requires them to reject (1) or (2). If they reject (2) but keep (1), then Alice the newborn must have dignity, since otherwise we have to say that Alice is a different entity from the later dignified Alicia, and both the theory that Alice perishes and the theory that Alice doesn’t perish is unacceptable. But if Alice the newborn has dignity, then the pro-choice argument from the lack of developed sophisticated cognitive abilities fails, because Alice the newborn lacks these abilities and so dignity comes apart from these abilities. But if dignity comes apart from these abilities, then the pro-choice argument based on personhood and these cognitive abilities is irrelevant. For it dignity is sufficient to ground a right to life, even absent personhood.

So, I think the pro-choice thinker who focuses on cognitive abilities will in the end need to deny that dignity is an essential property. I suspect most do deny that dignity is an essential property.

But I think the essentiality of dignity is pretty plausible. Dignity doesn’t seem to be something that can come and go. It seems no more alienable than the inalienable rights it grounds. It’s not an achievement, but is at the foundation of what we are.

Gaining and losing personhood?

1. Love (of the relevant sort) is appropriately only a relation towards a person.

2. Someone appropriately has an unconditional love for another human.

3. One can only appropriately have an unconditional R for an individual if the individual cannot cease to have the features that make R appropriate towards them.

4. Therefore, at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person. (1–3)

5. If at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person, then all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person.

6. If all humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person, then it is impossible for a non-person to become a human person.

7. All humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person. (4,5)

8. It is impossible for a non-person to become a human person. (6,7)

9. Any normal human fetus can become a human person.

10. Therefore, any normal human fetus is a person. (8,9)

(I think this holds of non-normal human fetuses as well, but that’ll take a bit more argument.)

It’s important here to distinguish the relevant sort of love—the intrinsically interpersonal kind—from other things that are analogously called love, but might perhaps better be called, say, liking or affection, which one can have towards a non-person.

I think the most controversial premises are 2 and 9. Against 2, I could imagine someone who denies 7 insisting that the most that is appropriate is to love someone on the condition of their remaining a person. But I still think this is problematic. Those who deny 7 presumably do so in part because they think that some real-world conditions like advanced Alzheimer’s rob us of our personhood. But now consider the repugnance of wedding vows that promise to love until death or damage to mental function do part.

Standing against 9 would be “constitution views” on which, normally, human fetuses become human animals, and these animals constitute but are not identical with human persons. These are ontologies on which two distinct things sit in my chair, I and the mammal that constitutes me, ontologies on which we are not mammals. Again, this is not very plausible, but it is a not uncommon view among philosophers.

The Theotokos and personhood

Catholics and the Orthodox insist that Mary is the Theotokos—the Godbearer. The child in her womb was God.

It follows that this child she bore in her womb was a person. For the child was God by virtue of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation consists precisely of the union of two natures in one person. Moreover, the Incarnation is a process of God becoming a human being. So that person in her womb was also a human being.

Thus, the human being Jesus, while in Mary’s womb, was a person. Now, Jesus is like us in all things but sin. So, while we are in our mothers’ wombs, we already are persons.

A theory of personhood or personal identity that requires human persons to have developed human mental functioning—like Warren’s theory of personhood or Locke’s theory of personal identity—conflicts with the Catholic and Orthodox teaching on Mary the Mother of God.

In-vitro fertilization and artificial intelligence

Catholics believe that:

1. The only permissible method of human reproduction is marital intercourse.

Supposing we accept (1), we are led to this interesting question:

2. Is it permissible for humans to produce non-human persons by means other than marital intercourse?

It seems to me that a positive answer to (2) would fit poorly with (1). First of all, it would be very strange if we could, say, clone Homo neanderthalensis, or produce them by IVF, but not so for Homo sapiens. But perhaps “human” in (1) and (2) is understood broadly enough to include Neanderthals. It still seems that a positive answer to (2) would be implausible given (1). Imagine that there were a separate evolutionary development starting with some ape and leading to an intelligent hominid definitely different from humans, but rather humanlike in behavior. It would be odd to say that we may clone them but can’t clone us.

This suggests to me that if we accept (1), we should probably answer (2) in the negative. Moreover, the best explanation of (1) leads to a negative answer to (2). For the best explanation of (1) is that human beings are something sacred, and sacred things should not be produced without fairly specific divine permission. It is plausible that we have such permission in the case human marital coital reproduction, but we have no evidence of such permission elsewhere. But all persons are sacred (that’s one of the great lessons of personalism). So, absent evidence of specific divine permission, we should assume that it is wrong for us to produce non-human persons by means other than marital intercourse. Moreover, it is dubious that we have been given permission to produce non-human persons by means of marital intercourse. So, we should just assume that:

3. It is wrong for us to produce non-human persons.

Moreover, if this is wrong, it’s probably pretty seriously wrong. So we also shouldn’t take significant risks of producing non-human persons. This means that unless we are pretty confident that a computer whose behavior was person-like still wouldn’t be a person, we ought to draw a line in our AI research and stop short of the production of computers with person-like behavior.

Do we have grounds for such confidence? I don’t know that we do. Even if dualism is true and even if the souls of persons are directly created by God, maybe God has a general policy of creating a soul whenever matter is arranged in a way that makes it capable of supporting person-like behavior.

But perhaps is reasonable to think that such a divine policy would only extend to living things?

Multiple levels of multiple realizability

We could have sophisticated beings who reason about the world via numerical Bayesian credences. But we could also have sophisticated beings who reason in some other way—indeed, we are such beings. And there is one sophisticated being who reasons about the world via omniscience. This suggests that reasoning and agency are multiply realizable at multiple levels, including:

1. brain/mind architecture

2. algorithms implementing general reasoning and representation strategy

3. general reasoning and representation strategy.

Each level is an abstraction from the previous. So now we have a very deep question: Is there a fourth level that abstracts from the third, to get the concept of reasoning as such? Or are the various general reasoning and representation strategies unified analogically, say by similarity to some primary case? And if so, what is the primary case? Omniscience? Logical omniscience plus numerical Bayesianism?

In vitro fertilization and creating genuine artificial intelligence

Catholic teaching says that there is (at least barring special divine dispensation) exactly one permissible way for human beings to directly produce new human beings: marital mating. This isn't just an arbitrary prohibition--arbitrary prohibitions like the one against pork went out (or, more precisely, underwent aufhebung) when the New Covenant came in. What is the reason for this restriction? We can, after all, permissibly produce other kinds of animals in other ways. There is no Catholic teaching against using artificial insemination in cattle.

I see two options. The first is that it is just the reflexiveness in human beings producing human beings requires the restriction. This seems implausible to me. Imagine that we meet Martians. It would be very odd to think that the Vulcans could permissibly produce new human beings in vitro and humans could permissibly produce new Vulcans in vitro, although humans couldn't permissibly produce humans in vitro (or Vulcans Vulcans).

The second option is that this has something to do with what is special about the target of production: a new human being. But what is it that is special about this target? It seems plausible that it is personhood. This suggests that we are only permitted to directly produce persons by marital mating. (Why? Maybe it has something to do with the more intimate way in which persons are images of God, and hence sacred, as in Paulo Juarez's comment. Or maybe there is a Kantian argument that other forms of production would fail to treat the persons as ends.)

But now if we were to generate genuine artificial intelligence--not merely computers acting as if they were intelligent--then we would have produced a person, and done so apart from marital mating. If I am right that it is personhood that is at the root of the prohibition on in vitro fertilization, it seems to follow that (at least barring special divine dispensation) it is impermissible for us to produce genuine artificial intelligence (AI).

Should this ethical constraint hamper AI research? That depends on whether there is significant reason to think that computers could ever actually have genuine intelligence. If dualism is true (and Catholicism entails dualism), then the only way a computer could gain genuine intelligence, as opposed to merely behaving like an intelligent thing, would be by gaining a soul. But perhaps God has enacted something like a law of nature by which whenever matter is organized in such a way that it could support intelligence, then that matter comes to be ensouled. If so, there could be an ethical problem in aiming at genuine artificial intelligence, and this could ethically restrict AI research since we might not know where the line of sufficient organization would be crossed (presumably, though, we're not that close to the line yet).

Maybe, though, things aren't so simple. Maybe rather than there being a general prohibition on our producing persons except by marital mating, what we have is a general prohibition on our directly producing persons by means other than the natural direct means for originating those kinds of persons. For humans, the natural direct means for origination is marital mating. But for intelligent computers, factory production could perhaps be the natural means for originating. Maybe, but I find more plausible the idea that we simply do not have the right to make persons, except by marital mating.

Teleological personhood

It is common, since Mary Anne Warren's defense of abortion, to define personhood in terms of appropriate developed intellectual capacities. This has the problem that sufficiently developmentally challenged humans end up not counting as persons. While some might want to define personhood in terms of a potentiality for these capacities, Mike Gorman has proposed an interesting alternative: a person is something for which the appropriate developed intellectual capacities are normal, something with a natural teleology towards the right kind of intellectual functioning.

I like Gorman's solution, but I now want to experiment with a possible answer as to why, if this is what a person is, we should care more for persons than, say, for pandas.

There are three distinct cases of personhood we can think about:

1. Persons who actually have the appropriate developed intellectual capacities.
2. Immature persons who have not yet developed those capacities.
3. Disabled persons who should have those capacities but do not.

The first case isn't easy, but since everyone agrees that those with appropriate development intellectual capacities should be cared for more than non-person animals, that's something everyone needs to handle.

I want to focus on the third case now, and to make the case vivid, let's suppose that we have a case of a disabled human whose intellectual capacities match those of a panda. Here is one important difference between the two: the human is deeply unfortunate, while the panda is--as far as the story goes--just fine. For even though their actual functioning is the same, the human's functioning falls significantly far of what is normal, while the panda's does not. But there is a strong moral intuition--deeply embedded into the Christian tradition but also found in Rawls--that the flourishing of the most unfortunate takes a moral priority over the flourishing of those who are less unfortunate. Thus, the human takes priority over the panda because although both are at an equal level of intellectual functioning, this equality is a great misfortune for the human.

What if the panda is also unfortunate? But a panda just doesn't have the range of flourishing, and hence for misfortune, that a human does. The difference in flourishing between a normal human state and the state of a human who is so disabled as to have the intellectual level of a panda is much greater than the total level of flourishing a panda has--if by killing the panda we could produce a drug to restore the human to normal function, we should do so. So even if the panda is miserable, it cannot fall as far short of flourishing as the disabled human does.

But there is an objection to this line of thought. If the human and the panda have equal levels of intellectual functioning, then it seems that the good of their lives is equal. The human isn't more miserable than the panda. But while I feel the pull of this intuition, I think that an interesting distinction might be made. Maybe we should say that the human and the panda flourish equally, but the human is unfortunate while the panda is not. The baselines of flourishing and misfortune are different. The baseline for flourishing is something like non-existence, or maybe bare existence like that of a rock, and any goods we add carry one above zero, so if we add the same goods to the human's and the panda's account, we get the same level. But the baseline for misfortune is something like the normal level for that kind of individual, so any shortfall carries one above zero. Thus, it could be that the human's flourishing is 1,000 units, and the panda's flourishing is 1,000 units, but nonetheless if the normal level of flourishing for a human is, say, 10,000 units (don't take either the numbers or the idea of assigning numbers seriously--this is just to pump intuitions), then the human has a misfortune of 9,000 units, while the panda has a misfortune of 1,000 units.

This does, however, raise an interesting question. Maybe the intuition that the flourishing of the most unfortunate takes a priority is subtly mistaken. Maybe, instead, we should say that the flourishing of those who flourish least should take a priority. In that case, neither the disabled human doesn't take a priority over the panda. But this is mistaken, since by this principle a plant would take priority over a panda, since the plant's flourishing level is lower than a panda's. Better, thus, to formulate this in terms of misfortune.

What about intermediate cases, those of people whose functioning is below a normal level but above that of a panda? Maybe we should combine our answers to (1) and (3) for those cases. One set of reasons to care for someone comes from the actual intellectual capacities. Another comes from misfortune. As the latter reasons wane, the former wax, and if all is well-balanced, we get reason to care for the human more than for the panda at all levels of the human's functioning.

That leaves (2). We cannot say that the immature person--a fetus or a newborn--suffers a misfortune. But we can say this. Either the person will or will not develop the intellectual capacities. If she will, then she is a person with those capacities when we consider the whole of the life, and perhaps therefore the reasons for respecting those future capacities extend to her even at the early stage--after all, she is the same individual. But if she won't develop them, then she is a deeply unfortunate individual, and so the kinds of reasons that apply in case (3) apply to her.

I find the story I gave about (2) plausible. I am less convinced that I gave the right story about (3). But I suspect that a part of the reason I am dissatisfied with the story about (3) is that I don't know what to say about (1). However, (1) will need to be a topic for another day.

Care and persons

To care about something that isn't a person to the degree that one cares about persons is wrong. It is a distortion of love to care in that way for a non-person, and it is a kind of disrespect to those who are persons when one cares for other things as much as persons deserve to cared about. (One thinks here of the implicit insult to children when someone loves a pet the way one loves a child.) But it is not wrong to care in this way about severely developmentally disabled humans. Hence these humans are persons.

Not only am I myself, but I am my self

1. (Premise) I am experiencing writing this post.
2. (Premise) My self is experiencing writing this post.
3. (Premise) Only one entity is experiencing writing this post.
4. So, I am my self.

This is an oblique partial Olsonesque response to a paper by Himma. It's not fully a response.

Memory and personhood

As in the last post, I am going to argue against the conjunction of the following two views:

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

In the previous post, the arguments against the view that the non-personal infant ceases to exist at the advent of personhood were decisive. So I will dismiss this option, and assume that the view is that after the advent of personhood, there are two beings, one of which existed prior to the advent of personhood and the other of which is the person.

Now, surely there are some animals, say dogs, that lack the skills posited by CogSkills have memories of having had particular experiences in the past. It is very plausible, then, that human infants prior to gaining these skills will also have some such memories. Suppose, then, that Sally is an infant, prior to the advent of the relevant complex cognitive skills, who has a memory of some experience. Surely she does not lose all of her experiential memories when she comes to gain these skills. On the contrary, surely some memories play an on-going role in developing the cognitive skills, and remain at least for a short time after the skills are present and a person has come to be present.
After personhood has been achieved, on the view we are thinking about, there will then be two subjects of some experiential memory of a pre-personal experience E. One subject will be a person and one a human animal. But only one of these two subjects will be having a veridical memory. For the person is mistaken in remembering having had the experience E. For the person never had E, since the person didn't exist when E occurred. The human animal, on the other hand, did have E, and her memory of E is veridical. The idea that here we have two subjects of memory, one veridical and one not, seems quite absurd. And this is a reason to reject the conjunction of CogSkills with NonStage.

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.

Memory, animals and personhood

Consider the following plausible theses:

1. Some non-human animals that are not persons (maybe dogs and maybe even rats) have experiential memories, i.e., memories in which they remember having lived through past events.
2. Human intellectual development is continuous and relatively slow.
3. It is an essential property of me that I am a person. In particular, if personhood begins at some point t after conception, then t is when I come to exist.

Interestingly, we cannot hold on to (1)-(3) as well as this thesis:

4. Personhood requires developed capacities for distinctively personal functioning.

For suppose for a reductio ad absurdum that (4) is true. Then at some point a year or two after conception, just when I developed capacities for distinctively personal functioning, I came into existence. Now imagine me on that first day of personhood and of existence. Because of the continuity of human intellectual development, a day earlier I was also a very sophisticated animal, presumably sophisticated enough to have formed experiential memories. After all, it seems very plausible given (2) that I've gone through all intermediate levels of intellectual development, and those stages, by (1) and (4) (we need (4) here to guarantee for the sake of argument what I ultimately deny, namely that personhood is a level of intellectual development), include a level where there are experiences but no personhood. These memories surely carry over.

So let's suppose that on my first day of personhood I remember myself as playing blocks with my dad a day earlier. But according to (3), I did not exist before personhood, and if I did not exist, I did not play blocks with my dad, either. And hence this experiential memory, inherited from the non-person human animal that preceded me, is incorrect and unveridical. This is absurd enough.

And here is a further, more serious, oddity. That experiential memory was veridical in the human animal a day before personhood came to be. It presumably still is correct in the human animal. So both the human animal and the human person have the same memory, or apparent memory, but it's only correct in the human animal and not in the human person. So the two memories have different content. This is very weird indeed. Furthermore, such formation of animal memories surely continues during personhood. So I have memories of having eaten breakfast and my animal has memories of having eaten breakfast, and these two memories have different content—for one can be correct (if, say, one remembers a breakfast prior to the advent of one's personhood) while the other is not. All this is very weird. (Of course, there is a non-coincidental resemblance here to Olson's arguments for animalism, but I find these versions add something, though maybe not.)

This is all too odd. So we really can't hold on to all of (1)-(4). I think one should deny (4). Some (e.g., Jeff McMahan) will deny (3) instead.

A dignity argument against most abortions

1. (Premise) If x has dignity, it is wrong to intentionally kill x primarily for the sake of a benefit to someone other than x.
2. (Premise) Elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly have dignity.
3. (Premise) If elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly have dignity, fetal humans have dignity.
4. Therefore, it is wrong to kill a fetal human primarily for the sake of a benefit to someone other than the fetus.

I think something broader than (1) is true—it's also wrong to kill an innocent for the sake of a benefit to x. But (1) will be less controversial. I think (3) is probably the most controversial premise. One argument for (3) is this:

5. (Premise) Dignity is either had by all humans or only by those who satisfy achievement-type conditions for personhood, such as being able to solve relatively sophisticated problems or communicate on a large variety of topics.
6. (Premise) Fetal humans are humans.
7. (Premise) If dignity is only had by those who satisfy achievement-type conditions for personhood, then elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly do not have dignity.
8. Therefore, if elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly have dignity, then dignity is had by all humans, and hence by fetal humans as well.

Alas, premise (2) may be somewhat controversial. Here is an argument for it.

9. (Premise) x can only suffer an indignity if x has dignity.
10. (Premise) Elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly can suffer indignities (and often do).
11. Therefore, elderly people whose minds are functioning very poorly have dignity.

Could something made of gears be a person?

Leibniz offers as a reductio of materialism the idea that if materialism is true, one could have a mind whose functional parts are like the parts of a giant mill, and you could walk right through that giant mill, seeing big wheels of all sorts. But, he thinks, you'd never meet with consciousness.

Leibniz's argument has two parts:

1. If materialism is true, a mind could be made of large gears (together with some source of kinetic energy, like a large water wheel).
2. A mind could not be made of large gears (plus energy source).

I think step (1) can be backed up as follows:

3. If materialism is true, functionalism is true.
4. If functionalism is true, then any physical system that can do sufficiently complex computations can be a mind.
5. A system of large gears (with an energy source) can do arbitrarily complex computations.
6. Therefore, (1) holds.

Leibniz doesn't do much to back up (2). The purpose of this post, and perhaps some succeeding ones, is to try to do this.

Here's one approach. If a mind could be made of gears, so could a person. Imagine a person made of hard plastic gears. Moreover, every so often the gears are given a rest (maybe so they can cool off—we don't want them to melt)—a small clockwork contraption disconnects the energy source, and everything, except that clock, becomes motionless. Now, a person exists while asleep, and it's plausible that in the rest state, the person would still exist.

Scenario 1: The whole set of gears, but not the wake-up clock, is in a big closed box, and while the gear-person is in a rest state, a thin slow-set two-part epoxy is poured into the box. It turns out that the person could still function with the epoxy, because the source of energy is powerful enough to move the gears through the liquid. However, slowly, the epoxy sets. Within 24 hours, what we have in the box is basically a single solid chunk (if we like, we can imagine the gears were themselves made of the same kind of epoxy, and then maybe one can't even tell where the gears were—but Scenario 2 won't work in that case). A single solid chunk like that isn't a person. So, during the 24 hour epoxy curing process, the person gradually ceases to exist. If we believe there cannot be vague existence, then that's enough to yield absurdity: persons can't cease to exist gradually. But it would be absurd if some slight change in the set of the epoxy were to make the difference between existence and non-existence. But even if vague existence is possible, here there is something weird. We have a continuum between something with the kinds of non-occurrent mental states that a person has—states like knowing how to speak German and believing that naturalism is true—and something without them. Moreover, if the epoxy cures uniformly, all of these states fizzle out uniformly. Now, maybe, we could imagine a person ceasing to exist gradually by having mental abilities go away one by one, losing memories one by one, and so on. But here at any time at which we have a person, we have a person with the same full set of the non-occurrent mental states of a person, adn then eventually we have something with no mental states at all. That seems weird.

If one thinks that the person continues to exist when the epoxy cures, but simply is encased in epoxy, then one is going to have to say that a plain block of marble with an energy source can also be a person, but one encased in marble (one can make gears out of marble): there really is a Hermes in the stone. And that's absurd.

Scenario 2: The epoxy has a slightly different chemical composition from the gears. After the person has ceased to exist due to the epoxy having set, a chemical removes the epoxy, leaving the gears intact. And so we have a person again. If temporal gaps in existence are possible, this case doesn't add anything to the story. But suppose temporal gaps are impossible. Then we have something weird. For we can make an argument that the person after the removal of the epoxy is the same as the person before. Here's the argument. We can imagine a variant story. In order to clean out and cool the system, during the rest state, water is poured into the gearbox and frozen. Then it's melted and removed. Intuitively, the person should count as surviving that. But how is that different from the epoxy case when the epoxy is going to be removed? It's not—so after the removal of the epoxy, we have the same person, which contradicts the assumption that temporal gaps are impossible.

Early embryos

It is often argued that the early (pre-implantation, human) embryo does not have a right to life because it is capable of twinning. The question is important, because if such an embryo does have a right to life, then embryo-destructive research (such as stem cell extraction) at this stage is wrong, and forms of birth control that can prevent implantation (e.g., the IUD, and perhaps hormonal contraception) are problematic.

I am going to try to reconstruct the best argument for this position, and then shoot it down. As an initial attempt, consider this:

1. Early embryos can split in two.
2. Something that can split in two lacks a definite identity.
3. Something that lacks a definite identity lacks a right to life.
4. Therefore, early embryos lack a right to life.

This argument is unsound. Each of us can split in two, for instance if we find ourselves victims of the guillotine. Yet we have a definite identity. So (2) is false. (It wouldn't help to add "naturally" to "split in two". First, we don't know that the embryo's splitting is "natural"—it might be an accident of some sort. Second, we can easily imagine critters that have a definite identity, but die by breaking up into two pieces.)

To fix the argument, we need to improve on premise (1) by saying something more about how early embryos can split in two. They do simply split in two: they twin. One way to formulate this is by saying that an embryo can split into two "entities" (I will use the term "entity" very widely, to include non-substances, heaps, etc.) of the same kind as it. But that won't be enough. For suppose that George is a member of a species that reproduces by growing a new member of the species as a bud on the shoulder. Then George can twin, but the ability to bud in this way is no threat to his definite identity or his right to life (if it's a species of persons). The issue, rather, seems to be with symmetric splitting.

So now our first premise is:

5. Early embryos can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind as themselves.

This premise, however, is ambiguous. To see that, consider the following argument: "Human beings can lactate; only female mammals can lactate; therefore, human beings are female mammals." The issue is that phrases like "Human beings can" and "Early embryos can" are ambiguous between a "some" and an "all" reading. Let's first try the "some" reading. Then the claim is that some early embryos have a capability for the right kind of symmetric splitting. But then the rest of the argument only leads to the conclusion that those early embryos that have a capability for splitting lack a definite identity and hence lack a right to life. One might try to paper over the difficulty by strengthening (2) to:

6. Anything of the same kind as an entity that can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind lacks a definite identity

and adding the auxiliary premise:

7. All early embryos are of the same kind.

However, it is not clear what argument can be given for (7) if one thinks that the capability for splitting is of such great importance as the defender of this argument thinks. So I think this is a non-starter.

Thus, the quantification in our initial premise needs to be over all early embryos. Or, maybe, all "normal" early embryos, allowing for the possibility that some early embryos might suffer from a splitting-disability. The argument now is:

8. Every normal early embryo can symmetrically split into two entities of the same kind as itself.
9. Something that can split into two entities of the same kind as itself lacks a definite identity.
10. Something that lacks a definite identity lacks a right to life.
11. Therefore, a normal early embryo lacks a right to life.

Indeed, (11) follows logically from (8)-(10). So the question is whether (8)-(10) are true.

Now, a glaring problem is that we do not at present know (8) to be true. There are two parts of this problem. The first part is that, last time I checked, we did not actually know that embryonic splitting is in fact symmetric. If it turns out that embryonic splitting proceeds by budding, the argument falls flat. Thus, the argument rests on an empirical hypothesis which is merely speculative. This is a problem: obviously, if the case for the lack of a right to life on the part of some organism is based on a merely speculative hypothesis, we should treat the organism as if it had a right to life until that speculative hypothesis is checked.

The second part of the problem with (8) is that we do not in fact know that all normal early embryos have the capability for splitting. The alternative view is that only some early embryos have a special characteristic in virtue of which they are capable of splitting (and there is no particular reason to think that this subclass of early embryos exhausts all the normal ones). As far as I know, we do not at present have enough empirical information to decide this issue. So, once again, (8) is up in the air empirically, and if this is what the case against the right to life of an early embryo is based on, we should treat the early embryo as if it had a right to life.

One might think that (8) could be defended by saying that even if naturally splitting isn't symmetric, or if only some early embryos can naturally split, still all early embryos could be surgically split. Maybe. But then (9) must be understood in a way that includes artificial splitting as well. And I think (9) understood in this way, conjoined with (10), is implausible. For it seems likely that one day it will be possible to destroy all of your body outside of your brain, so that you would be reduced to a functioning brain in a vat. If you were thus reduced to a functioning brain in a vat (say, as a radical treatment for an otherwise untreatable cancer—a rest-of-body amputation), you would surely still have a right to life. But a brain in a vat could, probably, be artificially split into two hemispheres in their own separate vats. And the split versions would seem to be the same kind of entity at the original, namely persons. So this would be a symmetric splitting of a person into two persons. But the mere possibility of such splitting surely neither threatens your identity nor removes your right to life, whether it is remote (as it is now, when you are not yet a brain in a vat) or near (as it would be were you to have the misfortune of being a brain in a vat).

So if (8) is understood to be only about natural splitting, our empirical knowledge does not give us (8). And if (8) is understood to be about artificial splitting, we should deny the conjunction of (9) and (10) under the appropriate interpretation of (9).

But let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that in fact (8) is true, and even true as regards natural splitting. Why should we believe (9)? It is tempting to say something like this:

12. If x symmetrically splits into y and z which are of the same kind as x, then either: (a) x=y and not x=z; or (b) x=z and not x=y; or (c) x=y=z; or (d) x ceases to exist and y and z are new entities; or (e) x lacks a definite identity.
13. Options (a)-(d) are absurd.
14. Therefore, x lacks a definite identity.

But there are several problems with this form of argument. First of all, there is a serious technical problem. The argument as it stands only shows that those early embryos that in fact are going to split are lacking in a definite identity. But that is only a very small minority of early embryos, and so the argument at most establishes that some very small minority of early embryos lacks a right to life. To get around this, one needs to add something like the following premise:

15. If x is capable of doing something such that, were it to do it, it would lack a definite identity, then x lacks a definite identity.

Now (with a bit of modal work) we can probably show that (9) follows from (15) and a version of the subargument (12)-(14).

But is (15) plausible? Suppose I am able to split my brain in half, through programming a robot to do it, or maybe through a feat of auto-neurosurgery. Perhaps a split brain patient lacks a definite identity. But even if it were true that a split brain patient lacks a definite identity, it would not follow that my capability of turning myself into a split brain patient makes me already lack a definite identity. So I think (15) is very much problematic.

Moreover, I reject (13). First of all, if dualism is true, then the kind of symmetry we are dealing with is only physical symmetry. It is quite possible that the physical facts are symmetric but the facts about the soul are asymmetric. Thus, (a) or (b) might be true. There might be some law specifying which of y and z gets x's soul, either in terms of some minor asymmetry (nobody thinks the asymmetry is total, with each half having the exact same number of molecules, in exactly the same positions) or stochastically (maybe it's random where the soul goes), with the other output entity getting a new soul. Or it might be that God decides where x's soul goes. So if dualism is true, (a) and (b) are not absurd.

Moreover, whether or not dualism is true, (d) is not absurd. It seems very plausible that this is the right thing to say about an amoeba's splitting: the old amoeba perishes in the act of reproducing into two new ones. If I cut a sculpture in half, symmetrically, I have very plausibly made two new sculptures out of the one old one, which perished in the cutting. And, of course, the fact that something has a capability of perishing does not imply it lacks a definite identity, since all the non-human organisms on earth have a capability of perishing.

In fact, the case of the amoeba shows directly that we should deny (9). An amoeba has the capability of splitting into two amoebae. But surely it exhibits a perfectly definite identity at least when it is not actually splitting. If the amoeba in my microscope slide hadn't split over the last 12 hours, and hasn't yet started splitting, then I now have the same amoeba I had 12 hours ago. That seems perfectly definite.

Moreover, it would be very surprising if there couldn't be intelligent aliens who reproduce like amoebae. And if there were such aliens, they would be a counterexample to the conjunction of (9) and (10): for they would be capable of symmetric splitting, but would, nonetheless, have a right to life.

Perhaps, though, the conclusion of the argument should be more modest. Instead of concluding that normal early embryos lack a right to life, maybe the argument should only conclude something like this: Don Marquis' argument against abortion does not apply to normal early embryos. For, Don Marquis' argument requires an identity between an embryo or fetus and an adult, so that killing the embryo or fetus is depriving it of a future like ours. I am not sure Marquis actually requires identity here (what he says about sperms and eggs suggests that he is talking of a relation weaker than identity). But nevermind—suppose he requires identity. Then one might argue that if the early embryo is capable of splitting in the near future, then it is not identical with a future adult. More precisely:

16. If x is capable of symmetrically splitting into two entities of the same kind in the near future, then x is not identical with any far-future entity.

But I think (16) is clearly false. If x in fact is going to symmetrically split in the near future, then maybe x is not identical with any far-future entity (but see my discussion of (12a) and (12b), above). But the mere capability of such splitting is surely irrelevant. Imagine Fred, an amoeba-like critter that every day, at noon, has a 2% chance of splitting symmetrically. Suppose that Fred in fact hasn't split during the past week (quite likely). Then Fred is the very same entity that he was a week ago. If he were to have split, we would perhaps be uncertain as to what we should say about his identity. But if he hasn't split, surely we should say that we have been dealing all along with the same entity. The mere possibility of symmetric splitting is not a threat to diachronic identity.

A thought experiment regarding abortion

The luckies are a species of intelligent beings, very much like humans intellectually, a species that has produced a culture of about the same level as we have. Luckies reproduce sexually, and their intellectual development proceeds at the same pace as that of humans. Thus, they begin their organic existence as a unicellular organism, and then grow quickly. Initially, they have no intellectual life to speak of. After a couple of weeks, just as a human embryo, a lucky develops a brain, and eventually becomes conscious. At nine months from fertilization, a lucky is quite helpless, just as a newborn human infant is. Up to around 21 months from fertilization, a lucky is just starting to catching up to the intelligence of an average dog, just as humans do at around 12 months after birth. At around 27 months from fertilization, luckies begin to recognize themselves in mirrors, and around five years after fertilization they become capable of uttering sentences involving embedded conditionals.[note 1]

But there is a crucial difference between the luckies and us. The luckies are fortunate enough to live in a natural environment empty of predators that could eat a small lucky, on a planet covered with vegetation whose nutrition a lucky for the first nine months from conception can absorb through the skin, and after that the lucky can easily suck the nutrition out of the vegetation. The fertilization of luckies, thus, happens externally to the body of both parents, and the resultant unicellular lucky, which will double in bulk every twelve hours for the first couple of days, is simply left on the vegetation in the parents' garden, to grow. Eventually, at about 8-10 months after fertilization, the parents start playing with the lucky, because although the lucky doesn't have any physical needs that call upon the parents, nonetheless its emotional and intellectual development from that point on starts to require interaction with other luckies.

My argument now has three stages:

1. Killing human infants is murder.
2. Therefore, killing luckies at any stage of their development is murder.
3. Therefore, killing humans at any stage of their development is murder.

And, of course, murder is by definition wrong.

Stage 1: I shall simply take it for granted that killing human infants is murder. There is no real controversy about this, except in the case of some philosophers who don't know when they have a reductio ad absurdum on their hands. In fact, we tend to think that there is something particularly barbaric about killing infants, and we do not think there is anything irrational in a parent sacrificing his or her life to save an infant, in a way in which it would be irrational to sacrifice one's life for one's dog.

Stage 2: Plainly, if to kill a human infant is murder, it is equally murder to kill a lucky from about nine months from fertilization on. For the lucky nine months after fertilization has the same kinds of actual and potential agentive and intellectual abilities that the human infant does. The difficulty is whether we can push this judgment back to the time of a lucky's fertilization.

Suppose we deny this. Then, while it is murder to kill a lucky at the nine month point, it is not murder to kill a lucky at the beginning. At some point a transition occurred, a transition from a lucky not being the kind of thing that has a right not to be killed (or, maybe, a right not to be killed unless one has done something to deserve it—the details here won't affect the argument much, I think), to a lucky being that sort of thing. What makes for that transition? Remember that in the developmental history of a lucky, there is no such thing as birth—luckies live autonomously from fertilization.

I see two possible transition points other than fertilization. The first is the coming into existence of the lucky's brain (or whatever the equivalent in a lucky is), and the second is the beginning of consciousness. I think neither transition point is plausible, for the following reasons. First, the mere existence of a brain that isn't actually thinking consciously gets you little of moral significance, unless one thinks that the brain is the individual or something like that, so that the individual comes into existence when the brain does. This is implausible. It is not my brain that is the thinker. It is I who think, at least in part, with my brain. Moreover, once one admits that a barely existent brain of a lucky is sufficient to ground a right not to be killed, I think one has admitted that things gain moral significance from what they naturally develop into it. For initially the brain of a lucky is, presumably, a poor affair (I assume it is like the brain of a human embryo), of less actual computational ability than the brain of an adult chicken, and I take it that adult chickens do not have a right not to be killed. What makes the brain of the lucky at all significant is that it has a natural propensity to develop into a brain capable of the kinds of intellectual skills that are distinctive of luckies and humans. But once such natural propensities are seen as sufficient to confer a right to life, then we have to say that a lucky has a right to life at fertilization, since the lucky at fertilization already has such a natural propensity. Consciousness is no more helpful as a transition point. It seems plausible that all mammals have consciousness, but not all mammals have a right not to be killed. By itself consciousness cannot have the relevant kind of significance, unless perhaps one takes a Cartesian view on which we are essentially conscious, so that consciousness is a necessary condition of our existence. But then we have to say, with Descartes, that all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, no matter how deeply we are asleep, we are conscious—else we cease to exist. This is implausible.

So we cannot mark a transition point in the life of a lucky between fertilization and nine months where a lucky would gain a right to life. Thus, we need to suppose that the lucky has always had that right, perhaps in virtue of its natural propensity to develop into an intelligent adult lucky.

Step 3: Observe that luckies and humans for the first nine months after fertilization do not seem very different intrinsically. The only difference is that the luckies find themselves in a natural environment that is much more friendly than the natural environment on earth. Thus, humans can currently only survive for that part of their development in a controlled environment in utero, luckies have that kind of an environment out in their parents' garden. Granted, the human embryo is more dependent on the mother than the lucky at the same stage of development. But the lucky is no less dependent—it's just that the dependence is not on the mother, but on the vegetation, the air, and other aspects of the environment. That, however, should not make for a difference in the lucky's moral status, just as, if we engineered an environment (e.g., an artificial womb) where humans could develop for the first nine months from fertilization, a human in this environment would not have any different moral status from a human in a womb.

If we had any reason to think an embryonic or fetal human was a mere part of the mother on whom it depended, maybe we could try to build an argument for the permisibility of killing it on that basis. But, first of all, embryonic and fetal humans are not a part of the mother, since their development has different goals from the mother's—they do not subserve the mother in the way a part does.

Are associations entities exercising agency?

It seems that committees, corporations, clubs and countries can and do exercise agency. That a committee has done A is not a claim that all or most of the people on the committee have done A (in fact, one person might have been deputed), and some of the things that a committee can do seem to be things that no individual can do (e.g., collectively deliberate). Thus, there seems to be good reason to introduce the notion of collective agency.

Now, some people go one step further and say that the collective agency is exercised by an entity—the committee, corporation, club or country—that is an agent. Here is an argument for this further step. For x to exercise agency, x must think (deliberate, etc.) But if x thinks, then x is. (Otherwise the inference "I think therefore I am" is invalid.) Therefore anything that exercises agency must be. And to be is to be an entity, a something or other, (a tode ti, to use the terminology of Metaphysics Z).

So the move for positing an agent where there is collective agency is not unjustified. But the move has the following consequence: committees, clubs and countries are persons. For it seems to be a conceptual truth that only persons are agents. To be an agent, one must be a rational being, after all.

But if committees, corporations, clubs and countries are persons, then to dissolve a committee, corporation, club or country is to kill a person. Therefore, to dissolve a committee, corporation, club or country requires reasons that have the kind of gravity that killing a person requires. But that is absurd, at least in the case of committees, corporations and clubs. While it is wrong to kill a person because her work is more efficiently done by someone else, it is not wrong to dissolve a committee because its deliberations can be more efficiently subsumed under another head. And while it can be permissible for a state to dissolve a corporation or club that refuses to accept members of some minority group, this kind of discrimination does not rise to the level of a capital crime—we would not, for instance, think it acceptable to execute a sole proprietor who exhibited racism in hiring.

Therefore, it is absurd to say that committees, corporations and clubs are entities that exercise agency. And if the argument from collective agency to collectives being agents is sound, then it follows that committees, corporations and clubs do not exercise agency, except in an analogical sense.

Notice something, though. My argument above is carefully phrased to apply to committees, corporations and clubs. It might be argued not to apply to countries. For there is some plausibility to the idea that a country can only be permissibly dissolved for the gravest of reasons, reasons akin to those that justify execution (think of the partition of Germany after WWII as a form of capital punishment on the country). Still, I think this is mistaken. Reasons for two nationalities within a country to separate need not be as grave as the reasons for killing a person, if the separation can be done in a peaceful way (perhaps the separation of the Czechs and the Slovaks is an example?)

It could also be that there are some genuine collective entities. Thus, it could be that the Church is a genuine collective entity. Certainly the Christian is likely to say that to try to destroy the Church is worse than trying to kill a person (but, fortunately, destroying the Church is impossible). It could also be that a Christian marriage is a genuine collective entity, and that therefore to try to break up such a marriage is akin to attempted murder (again, fortunately, only death can actually break up a Christian marriage).

But even if there are such supernatural collective entities, it is clear that the phenomenon that gets analyzed by some as "collective agency" is not limited to them. Thus, if the argument from collective agency to collectives being agents is sound, one needs a different story about colelctive agency.

Abortion and politics

Let us assume, as is in fact the case, that fetuses are persons, and abortion is immoral and should be illegal. Let us imagine two politicians, Smith and Kowalska, running for high state or federal office. Kowalski believes:

1. fetuses are persons, and hence abortion is immoral, but
2. abortion should be legal.

Smith, on the other hand, believes:

3. fetuses are not persons, and abortion is permissible, and
4. abortion should be legal.

Insofar as these beliefs go, Kowalska is closer to the truth: she is right about (1) but wrong about (2), while Smith is wrong about (3) and wrong about (4). But observe that Kowalska is committed to a further claim which follows from (1) and (2) (and the uncontroversial additional assumption that is almost universally granted that if fetuses are persons, they are innocent persons who are killed with abortion):

5. There are some innocent persons killing whom should be legal.

Thus, even though Smith's views on abortion are more false, she is not thereby committed to the abhorrent view (5). But Kowalska's truer, but more conflicted, views lead to (5). Therefore, pro-lifers have reason to vote for Smith over Kowalska. Indeed, Kowalska either believes (5) or she is not smart enough to draw the inference to (5) from (1) and (2). The belief in (5) is arguably sufficient to disqualify one from high public office, while the inability to see that (5) follows from (1) and (2) (together with uncontroversial assumptions) suggests that one lacks the intellectual skills needed for high public office. Of course it is possible that Smith is also disqualified, and so are all the other candidates. If so, then one has a hard choice.

Commonality of nature and the Incarnation

St. Athanasius insists that it was crucial for Christ's redemption of us that Christ both share in the divine nature and in the human nature: in the divine nature to unite us with God, and in the human nature in order to unite us with God. The bond of a common nature with us made his redemptive work applicable to us.

The idea that the common human nature is a genuine bond is a fruitful one. (A lot of science-fiction from the middle of the last century takes this bond to be important. Yes, the aliens of the stories are persons, but there is a special bond that human persons share. However, a number of science-fiction writers confused this special bond with some kind of human superiority to the aliens they populated their stories with. But that is mistaken, a mistake which we will avoid if we remember C. S. Lewis's discussion of two kinds of patriotism--the bad kind where one likes one's country because one thinks one's country is better and the good kind where one simply has affection for one's country and its institutions and culture.)

It is, however, tempting after Kant to see what is significant about us as not our humanity which integrally includes both the personal and the animal aspects of our existence, but just the personal aspects. If we see what is significant about us as just personhood, then Athanasius' account of why the Incarnation was needed loses some of its force. For if what is significant about us is personhood, then the second person of the Trinity already had personhood prior to the Incarnation. Admittedly that personhood was not precisely like ours--if St. Thomas is right, we can term the Logos and ourselves "persons" only by analogy. But nonetheless there is an analogy there, and the fleshly nature of the Incarnation becomes less clearly needed.

It is theologically important to hold on to the idea that we are not just persons. We are also animals. We are human beings with all that this entails. That is one reason why accounts that attempt to reconcile evolution with the divine plan by insisting that God only cared about producing persons, and left it to a chance he did not control whether these persons should be mammals or reptiles, biped or quadrapeds, and so on, are theologically mistaken. A part of the significance of the Incarnation is that our concrete enfleshment matters. The kind of persons we are is defined in large part by our flesh, and the kind of flesh we have is defined in large part by its aptness towards personal activity. Ignoring the concrete enfleshment is apt to lead us to philosophical error, such as the error of those who think that there are two co-located beings in front of this computer, one a person and the other an animal, an error that leads to moral mistakes on issues like abortion and euthanasia.

What is this commonality of nature that all of humans have and which St. Athanasius thought so important? Platonists will say it is our common participation in a single thing, the Form of Humanity. Aristotelians will say that it is our possession of numerically distinct essences, which are, nonetheless, qualitatively the same. The Platonic story fits somewhat better with St. Athanasius' account, but both accounts provide an ontological basis for the commonality of nature.

Christ, having reconciled us human beings with God will also re-integrate our nature, bringing the animal and the personal together, when he transforms us in the resurrection, completing his new creation in us. Blessed be his name!

The Word became flesh. Let us bend the knees of our body and of our soul before him as we celebrate with joy this jarring truth.