Love (of the relevant sort) is appropriately only a relation towards a person.
Someone appropriately has an unconditional love for another human.
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.
Therefore, at least one human is such that they cannot cease to be a person. (1–3)
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.
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.
All humans are such that they cannot cease to be a person. (4,5)
It is impossible for a non-person to become a human person. (6,7)
Any normal human fetus can become a human person.
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.
9 comments:
Alex
I have trouble understanding the logic behind 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."
How does the fact that X cannot cease to be X imply that ~X cannot become X?
Are you advocating existential inertia? Because you seem to be saying that every human being is eternal and that this implies that human beings are uncreated.
It's just an intuition that typically transformations can go both directions. If a lump of clay can become a statue, that statue can become a lump of clay again. Similarly, if a non-person can become a human person, then this can reverse, and the human person can go back to being a person.
In practice, the main view on which a non-person can become a human person is a view on which personhood is constituted by a bunch of developed capacities for personal agency. On a view like that, change between persons and non-persons is bidirectional.
Alex
I am not sure I share your intuition.
Do you think it is possible to transform mayonaise into eggs and oil again?
There are two senses of "become". In one sense, we say that a horse becomes a carcass. In another sense, we say that a student becomes a master. In the second sense, when X became Y, the entity that used to be X continued to exist and is now Y. In the first sense, X ceases to exist and Y comes to exist in its place, out of X's stuff.
Eggs and oil become mayonnaise in the first sense: the eggs cease to be when they turn into mayonnaise. But the sense that I am interested in in the post is the second sense. After all, everyone agrees that a non-person can become a person in the first sense: everyone agrees that sperm and egg turn into a person (though there is disagreement about whether this happens immediately, or over months or even years through a series of intermediate stages).
Alex
But if a non-person can become a person in the first sense, then a person can become a non-person in the first sense too.
I don't see, on your definition of appropriate love as intrinsically interpersonal, ceasing or not ceasing to be a person has any significance. Obviously, on that definition you can only love someone as long as he is a person. If that person should stop being a person, then obviously you stop loving this person and the love you promise until death etails that at one point this love can become 'inappropriate'.
Your wedding vows are only repugnant if they entail that damage to mental functions allow you to stop loving this person in any sort of way. Bu you love the person as a person as long as he is a person and you love him in another way if he ceases to be a person.
Your love is, IOW, appropriate to the situation.
Love has two crucial features: it is interpersonal and it is focused on a particular individual. Unconditional love is supposed to persist as long as the individual persists. This only works if the individual remains a person as long as they persist.
People change, Alex.
Hi, Alex. Could you explain a bit what you mean by love "in the relevant sense"? I don't think that my dog is a person, but I do think that I love my dog. Now of course, my love for my dog is not the same thing as my love for a friend or a family member, but neither is my love for a friend the same as a love for a family member. So in what sense is love only appropriately given to a person, and why couldn't it appropriately be given to other living non-persons?
It seems to me that there is something quite different about an interpersonal love than about our love for non-persons. But I don't know how to characterize it. Figuring that out is a good philosophical project.
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