Potentiality, Abortion, Contraception

This interesting missive just over the transom.  My responses in blue.

I have been pondering your application of the Potentiality Principle to the question of abortion. It is undoubtedly the case that a one year old child has the potential to become an adult possessing rights-conferring properties. It is also undoubtedly the case, for much the same reasons, that a foetus in the third trimester of pregnancy possesses that same potential. However, as we move back along the chain of causality from childhood to birth to pregnancy and before, at some point we no longer have a potential person.

I agree that at some point we no longer have a potential person.  Neither a sperm cell by itself, nor an unfertilized egg cell by itself, nor the unjoined pair of the two is a potential person.  See 'Probative Overkill' Objections to the Potentiality Principle.  This post refutes the notion that one committed to the Potentiality Principle is also committed to the notion that spermatazoa and unfertilized ova and various set-theoretical constructions of same are also  potential persons.

Let the symbol P represent the property of having the potential to possess rights-conferring properties in the future. In order for a thing to possess P, that thing must exist as an entity capable of possessing such a property as P.  Now consider a couple of somewhat contrived examples:

1. You have a female friend who is currently dating a man of whom you disapprove. You therefore intervene in order to break up their relationship. If you had not broken up the relationship, they may have gone on to have children together. You have therefore broken a chain of causality that may have culminated in the creation of a child, i.e. an entity possessing P.

However, at the time at which you acted, no such entity existed. I think I am safe in saying that, although your meddling in your friend's relationship may be morally dubious, nobody reasonable would condemn you for murder.

Of course.  Murder is wrongful killing of a human.  Only what exists and is alive can be killed.  (You can't kill a dead man or a refrigerator.)  A merely possible x is not an existent x.  Hence a merely possible human being cannot be murdered.  To prevent a human being from coming into existence is not to commit murder.

2. You are a surgeon in the employ of a state that enforces a policy of eugenics. A woman deemed mentally defective is brought to you to be sterilised. Again, although most people today would have serious qualms about the morality of enforced sterilisation, I don't think they would consider you to be a murderer. You have, with a reasonably high degree of probability, broken a chain of causality that would otherwise have led to the creation of an entity possessing P. But such an entity did not already exist when you acted.

Right. So far, so good.

We can apply the same analysis to the use of contraception such as condoms. Now we are even further along the chain of causality, and it is even more obvious that you are deliberately breaking that chain, but most people would still stop short of convicting you of homicide. We are already in controversial waters though as some people really do consider this homicide (such as those that protested in Spain a few years ago against pharmacists who sell condoms). But it is hard to see how one can reasonably claim that an entity possessing P exists in this situation.

I don't recall the Spain case, but I rather doubt that anyone has ever argued that contraception is a form of homicide.  It is perfectly  obvious that it is not.  But that is not to say that there could not be other arguments against contraception.  And of course I agree that "no entity possessing P exists in this situation." 

Conception is only different in that there is an apparently single entity, namely the human zygote, to which we can easily point and claim that it possesses P. But ease of identification is of merely pragmatic concern, it carries no logical weight. If you wish to claim that conception represents a fundamentally different situation, the burden is on you to demonstrate that a human zygote is an entity possessing P. It is far from obvious that it is.

Here is where I believe you begin to go wrong.  I would say that it is obvious that the two cases are very different and that the burden of proof lies on anyone who thinks they are not.  In fact, I find it to be so obvious that they are different that I feel no obligation to argue for the difference; rather, I feel entitled to stand pat unless your side has an argument for no difference.  Isn't it spectacularly  obvious that there are things that have a potentiality-to-X that their constituents, taken individually, do not have?

It appears to be just one more link in the chain of causality that began when the two potential parents first met (well, actually it presumably began even earlier) and might at some point include the birth of a child. Somewhere along that chain of causation an entity possessing P comes into existence. Why pick fertilisation? Furthermore, since fertilisation is not an atomic act, we still haven't actually answered the question. At which point does the entity come into being? When the sperm first binds to the egg? Why is a zygote a more reasonable choice than an oocyte penetrated by a spermatozoon before genetic fusion has completed?

It seems far more plausible that such an entity does not come into being instantaneously but rather develops gradually. There is no single moment when an entity with the potential to possess rights-conferring properties comes into existence, but rather that potential develops gradually along with the entity. (And there is no single moment when an entity with the potential to possess the potential to possess rights-conferring properties comes into existence either, and so on.)

We can agree that at some point, or rather stage, an entity possessing P comes into existence.  Nothing hinges on isolating the exact 'instant' or 'moment' of conception.  That is a red herring since one needn't be committed to saying that conception is an instantaneous event.  One can cheerfully grant that it is a process that can be divided into stages with the task of dividing it falling to biologists.

The main point I would insist on is that prior to conception there is nothing in existence possessing the potentiality to develop, in the normal course of events, into a rights-bearer, but that after conception there is.  That is the crucial difference, and that is the difference that makes the difference between contraception, which is clearly not the killing of a human being, and abortion, which clearly is. 

I also disagree when you say that the "potential develops gradually along with the entity."  I think that's a mistake.  The development of the entity, the conceptus, is the  gradual actualization of its potentiality.  It is not the potentiality that develops but the thing that has it.

Here is a crude analogy that illustrates some of the main points.  A ball of dough has the potential to 'rise.'  This potential is not had by any of the ingredients taken individually: the water, salt, flour, yeast.  Nor is the potential to rise had by the set or the mereological sum of the ingredients.  The potential is had only by the ingredients when properly mixed.  Whether or not the potential will be actualized depends, of course, on external conditions such as temperature.  But in standard conditions of temperature, atmospheric pressure, etc., the dough will  rise.  Now this potential does not itself rise or change in any way: it becomes actual or not.

To extend the analogy.  Suppose the Anti-Pizza Demon tries to prevent the dough from coming into existence.  He places a piece of rubber over the mixing bowl.  Has the demon murdered the potential pizza?  No.  Has he performed a 'pizza abortion'?  No.  There is nothing there to 'murder.' He has prevented the coming into existence of the dough which has the potential to rise.  The Demon has committed 'pizza contraception.'

Anyway, I just thought you might find this interesting. Thank you very much for writing a most stimulating blog.

Charles

"I'm a Solipsist, and I must say I'm surprised there aren't more of us." -- Letter received by Bertrand Russell

Thanks for the kind words, Charles.  As you can see, I did find your letter interesting.

　

Comments

[Account Deleted]

About a year ago we have discussed at length the problem posed here; it is one of the stock objections against the potentiality argument. The intuition behind the objection is this. Suppose you have a chain of causes c1…cn. Then if you attribute a potentiality property to any element in the chain, say ci, then (i) it makes sense to drive that potentiality property all the way back to the initial element of the chain; and (ii) there is no natural cutoff point cj in the chain of causes such that subsequent to cj it makes sense to attribute the potentiality property, whereas prior to cj it makes no sense to apply the potentiality property.

When we last examined this problem, someone (I forgot whom) introduced the notion of ‘developmental potential’. I take it that the intuition behind development potential was this: certain causal chains have a *natural segment* such that there is a first link in the natural segment which constitutes the beginning of the development and that this first link is the cutoff point so that any potentiality property that is attributed to any subsequent point can be driven back through the causal chain only to the initial link and no further.

I think that this intuition is fundamentally correct. Many children have the potential to become great mathematicians, musicians, or basketball players. But it simply makes no sense to say that some particular sperm or unfertilized egg has any of these potentials. How far back can we drive this potential through the causal chain? I am not sure that I have a conclusive answer! But if pressed, I would venture the following answer.

A sub-section of a causal chain constitutes a *natural segment* provided there is at least one individuating property P such that: (a) the initial link of the natural segment features P; (b) if any link n subsequent to the initial link in the natural segment features P, then link n+1 features P; and (c) no other entity outside the natural segment features P.

Let the DNA of a given fetus be P. Then I think that the DNA defines a natural segment with the fertilization of the egg constituting the initial element. Hence, developmental potentialities can be driven back only up to this point and no further.

Of course, I do not insist that DNA is the only individuating property that can serve as defining the cutoff point. But the conditions specified above require at least one such property and DNA will do in many cases. So if personhood is a developmental property, which I think it is, then it can serve as a developmental potential. And so the property of being a potential person can be only driven back to a certain point in the causal chain and no further (perhaps to the point of conception).

[Bill Vallicella]

By the way, Peter, Tony Hanson responds to you in the earlier abortion thread. More later!

[Bill Vallicella]

Thanks, Peter. Just read your comment. Glad we agree!

[John Farrell]

Comments are back! :)

[Bill Tingley]

Peter,

I agree with you. If an entity has an essence and its potentiality is constrained by that essence, would you say that "developmental potential" is essence in naturalistic terms?

Regards,
Bill T

[Bill Vallicella]

John,

The Combox is open or not on a post-by-post basis.

I am glad to have you as a reader! And Tingley too.

Merry Xmas,

Bill

[Bill Tingley]

Merry Christmas to you and yours, Bill.

Bill T

[Charles]

Dear Peter,

I think you have captured my intuition quite clearly, thank you. However, I do not think DNA is a suitable candidate for an individuating property. Your third condition, (c), is "no other entity outside the natural segment features P". But DNA is not unique to a single entity so it does not fulfil this condition. Identical twins, both of which had the same zygote in the chain of causes that led to their development, share the same DNA. (There is also a non-zero probability that any two people drawn from the same population have the same DNA.)

If an individuating property that truly defines a "natural segment" could be found, then that might provide good grounds to reject proposition (ii): "there is no natural cutoff point cj in the chain of causes such that subsequent to cj it makes sense to attribute the potentiality property, whereas prior to cj it makes no sense to apply the potentiality property."

If DNA is not such a property, what is? Unless such a property is identified, I think it is reasonable to accept (ii).

[Charles]

Dear Bill,

I am sorry I have taken so long to comment on this post. Work and Christmas have not left me much time for pleasant pondering. However, I now have a few days off around New Year so I shall take the opportunity to respond.

You wrote, "I also disagree when you say that the "potential develops gradually along with the entity.""

I was attempting to convey my hunch that thinking in terms of Aristotelian/Thomistic potentiality may not be helpful in this situation. Actualization of potentiality requires that we already have an entity with a certain potentiality that might be actualized as the entity develops. However, the problem in this situation is that we are trying to determine when that entity comes into existence.

We both agree that the entity possessing P cannot possibly be in existence before conception. I fully agree that it is "spectacularly obvious that there are things that have a potentiality-to-X that their constituents, taken individually, do not have". However, I do not agree that it is obvious that conception is the moment when an entity possessing P comes into existence. I think it is quite plausible that it comes into existence at some point after conception.

In your dough analogy, you said, "The potential is had only by the ingredients when properly mixed." The trick is to work out which part of the human embryological process is analogous to the dough's being "properly mixed". It is tempting to choose conception because it superficially appears to be the stage at which all the "ingredients" have been "mixed" into a single blob. However, I contend that this is a false analogy. Your December 16th post, Fission and Zygotes [1], provides one example of a way in which human fertilization and development is different from merely mixing dough ingredients.

For reasons of "moral safety" it may well be best to take conception as a cut-off point. However, I do not think you have a compelling argument that conception really is a rational cut-off point. To use the terminology of Peter Lupu's comment, it is necessary to identify some individuating property that defines a "natural segment". So far, I have not seen any such property identified. Embryology just isn't enough like cooking to make the analogy of mixing ingredients hold up.

Happy New Year!

[1] http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/12/fission-and-zygotes.html