Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons

(Written 20 July 2015)

I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood:

The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them. For the adherent of the substance view of persons, "potential" does not essentially refer to some possible future state of affairs. Rather, in this conception of what I will call developmental potential, to say that an organism has the potential to manifest some property means that that property belongs essentially to the kind of thing that it is (i.e., is among the essential properties it has by nature). Whether or not a specific individual actualizes the potentialities of its nature is contingent; but those potentialities necessarily belong to its nature in virtue of its membership in a specific natural kind.

I don't understand this.  Let the property be rationality.  Let organism o belong to the natural kind human being.  We assume that man is by nature a rational animal. A human fetus is of course a human being.  Suppose the fetus is anencephalic.  It too is a human being -- it is not lupine or bovine or a member of any other animal species.  But it is a defective human being, one whose defect is so serious that it, that very individual, will never manifest rationality.  So how can every human being have "the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood"?  That is my question.  Now consider the following answers/views.

A1: The anencephalic human fetus does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  This is because it lacks "the largest part of the brain consisting mainly of the cerebral hemispheres, including the neocortex, which is responsible for cognition." (Wikipedia)

A2:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because it is a member of a species or natural kind the normal (non-defective) members of which do have the potentiality in question.

A3:  The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

I think (A2) is the most charitable reading of the above quoted paragraph considered in the context of Lu's entire paper. Accordingly, a particular anencephalic fetus has the potentiality to manifest rationality because other genetically human members of the same species do have the potentiality in question.  This makes no sense to me.  But perhaps I am being obtuse, in which case a charitable soul may wish to help me understand.  To be perfectly honest, I really would like it to be the case that EVERY  "human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or does actually manifest them."  I would like that to be the case because then I would not  have to supplement my Potentiality Argument against abortion with other principles as I have done in other entries.

What's my problem?  Let's start with an analogy. It is narrowly logically possible and broadly logically possible that I run a four-minute mile.  It is also nomologically possible that I run a four-minute mile. For all the latter means is that the laws of nature pertaining to human anatomy and physiology do not rule out a human being's running a four-minute mile.  Since they do not rule out a human being's running that fast, they don't rule out my running that fast.

But note that the laws of human physiology abstract entirely from the particularities and peculiarities of me qua individual animal.  They abstract from my particular O₂ uptake, the ratio of 'fast twitch' to 'slow twitch' muscle fibers in my legs, and so on.  And to be totally clear: it is the concrete flesh-and-blood individual that runs, 'Boston Billy' Rodgers, for example, that very guy, not his form, not his matter, not his nature, not any accident or property or universal or subjective concept or objective concept that pertains to him. 

Now consider the question: do I, BV, have the potential to run a four-minute mile? No.  Why not?  Because of a number of deficiencies, insufficiencies, limitations and whatnot pertaining to the particular critter that I am.  The fact that other runners have  the potential in question is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with me?  The question, again, is whether I, BV, have/has the potentiality in question.  It is also totally irrelevant that the laws of human physiology do not rule out my running a four-minute mile.  Again, this is because said laws abstract from the particularities and peculiarities of the concrete individual.  Surely it would be a very  serious blunder to suppose that the nomological possibility of my running a four-minute mile  entails the potentiality of my doing any such thing. That would be a two-fold blunder: (i) potentiality is not possibility, and (ii) potentiality is always the potentiality of some concrete individual or other.

Similarly, the anencephalic individual does not have the potentiality to manifest rationality.  The fact that normal human fetuses do have this potentiality is totally irrelevant.  What do their individual potentialities have to do with the potentialities or lacks thereof of the anencephalic individual?  It is also totally irrelevant that man is by nature a rational animal, that the capacity to reason is 'inscribed' (as a Continental philosopher might say) in his very essence.  For the question is precisely whether or not this very anencephalic individual has the potentiality to manifest rationality.  My answer, as you may have surmised, is No. 

I think I can diagnose the neo-Scholastic error, if error it is.  (I hope it is not an error, for then the Potentiality Argument is strengthened and simplified.)  Take a look at (A3):

A3. The anencephalic human fetus does have the potentiality to manifest rationality because the natural kind itself has the potentiality to manifest rationality.

This, I submit, is a complete non-starter.  Whatever a natural kind is, it itself does not have the potential to be rational.  It can no more be rational than humanity in general can run.  (I once entered a 10 K event called 'The Human Race.' I did not compete against humanity in general, but against certain particular human critters.)

So it can't be the universal nature humanity that has the potential to be rational.  What about the individual or individualized nature, the human nature of Socrates, of Plato, et al.?  Could a particular individualized nature be that which has the potential to manifest rationality?  No again.  For it is but an ontological constituent of  a concrete man such as Socrates.  It is baby Socrates that has the potential to manifest rationality and excel in dialetic, not one of his ontological constituents.  Socrates is more than his individual human nature; there is also the dude's matter (materia signata) to take into consideration.  Our man is a hylomorphic compound, and it is this compound in which the potentiality to display rationality is grounded.

My diagnosis of neo-Scholastic error, then, is that neo-Scholastics, being Aristotelians, tend to conflate a primary substance such as Socrates with his individual(ized) nature. Since human nature in general includes the potential to be rational, it is natural to think that every individual(ized) human nature, whether normal or defective, has the potential to be rational.  But surely it is not the individual(ized) human nature that has the potential to be rational, but the ontological whole of which the individual(ized) human nature is a proper part.  In the case of the anencephalic fetus, this ontological whole includes defective matter that cannot support the development of rationality.  Only if one confuses the individual(ized) human nature of the anencephalic individual with the concrete anencephalic individual could one suppose that it too has the potential to manifest rationality.

The fact that Lu's paragraph above is ambiguous as between (A2) and (A3) further supports my contention that there is a confusion here.

My view, then, is (A1).  Abortion is a grave moral evil.  The Potentiality Argument, however, does not suffice as an argument against every instance of it.  This is not to say that the aborting of the anencephalic is morally acceptable.  It rather suggests that the PA requires some form of supplementation.

A Common Abortion Mistake

It is often said that  a human fetus is a potential human life.  Not so!  A human fetus is an actual human life. 

Consider a third-trimester human fetus, alive and well, developing in the normal way in the mother.  It is potentially many things: a neonate, a two-year-old, a speaker of some language, an adolescent, an adult, a corpse. And  let's be clear that a potential X is not an X.  A potential oak tree is not an oak tree.  A potential neonate is not a neonate.  A potential speaker of Turkish is not a Turkish speaker.  But an acorn, though only potentially an oak tree, is an actual acorn, not a potential acorn.  And its potentialities are actually possessed by it, not potentially possessed by it.

The typical human fetus is an actual, living, human biological individual that actually possesses various potentialities.  So if you accept that there is a general, albeit not exceptionless, prohibition against the taking of innocent human life, then you need to explain why you think a third-trimester fetus does not fall under this prohibition.  You need to find a morally relevant difference -- not just any old difference, but a difference that makes a moral difference -- between the fetus and any born human individual.

Secular Arguments Against Abortion

A question rarely asked is the one I raise in this post:  

Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises?

Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1) Infanticide is morally wrong.
2) There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infancticide.
Therefore
3) (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument.  

Now suppose someone demands to know why one should accept the first premise.  Present this argument:

4) Killing innocent human beings is morally wrong.
5) Infanticide is the killing of innocent human beings.
Therefore
1) Infanticide is morally wrong.

This second argument, like the first, invokes no specifically religious premise.  Admittedly, the general prohibition of homicide -- general in the sense that it admits of exceptions -- comes from the Ten Commandments which is part of our Judeo-Christian heritage.  But if you take that as showing that (4) is religious, then the generally accepted views that theft and lying are morally wrong would have to be adjudged religious as well.

But I don't want to digress onto the topic of the sources of our secular moral convictions, convictions that are then codified in the positive law.  My main point is that one can oppose abortion on secular grounds. A second point is that the two arguments I gave are very powerful.  If you are not convinced by them, you need to ask yourself why.

Some will reply by saying that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body.  This is the Woman's Body Argument:

6) The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
7) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
8) A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.

For this argument to be valid, 'part' must be used in the very same sense in both premises. Otherwise, the argument equivocates on a key term.  There are two possibilities. 'Part' can be taken in a wide sense that includes the fetus, or in a narrow sense that excludes it.

If 'part' is taken in a wide sense, then (6) is  true. Surely there is a wide sense of 'part' according to which the fetus is part of its mother's body. But then (7) is reasonably rejected. Abortion is not relevantly like liposuction. Granted, a woman has a right to remove unwanted fat from her body via liposuction. Such fat is uncontroversially part of her body. But the fetus growing within her is not a part in the same sense: it is a separate individual life. The argument, then, is not compelling. Premise (7) is more reasonably rejected than accepted.

If, on the other hand, 'part' is taken in a narrow sense that excludes the fetus, then perhaps (7) is acceptable, but (6) is surely false: the fetus is plainly not a part of the woman's body in the narrow sense of 'part.'

I am making two points about the Woman's Body Argument.  The first is that  my rejection of it does not rely on any religious premises.  The second is that the argument is unsound. 

Standing on solid, secular ground one has good reason to oppose abortion as immoral in the second and third trimesters (with some exceptions, e.g., threat to the life of the mother).  Now not everything immoral should be illegal.  But in this case the objective immorality of abortion entails that it ought to be illegal for the same reason that the objective immorality of the wanton killing of innocent adults requires that it be  illegal.

Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent.

P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

The question, then, is whether (P1) and (P2) are logically consistent. To say that two propositions are logically consistent is to say that they can both be true. To say that two propositions are logically inconsistent is to say that they cannot both be true. To show that two propositions are logically consistent it is not necessary to show that they are true; it suffices to show that it is possible that they be true. Thus, BV is a world class runner is logically consistent with BV is a world class mountain biker even though both propositions are (spectacularly!) false.

Now are (P1) and (P2) logically consistent in the sense lately defined? Obviously they are. Suppose that the right to life is grounded in the potentiality to develop into something to which one accords person-status, where a person is a rights-possessor. This is a possible view, and indeed one actually held by many. Any Aristotelian worth his salt will be able to spell it out coherently and perhaps even persuasively. Suppose also that a similarly coherent case is made for (P2). One will then have made a case for the possibility of their both being true. So why should anyone think that (P1) and (P2) are inconsistent? On the face of it, they are logically consistent.

So why do so many people think they are inconsistent? Perhaps these people are not concerned with the question of logical consistency, which is a relation between or among propositions. Perhaps they are thinking in terms of consistency in the application of a principle. Consistency in this sense is not a relation between or among propositions, but involves a person who applies a principle to cases that it may or may not subsume.  The first type of consistency is purely logical; the second is pragmatic.

To apply a principle consistently is to apply it to all like cases in a like manner. So if the principle is to cherish, value, uphold human life, then perhaps their thought is that to apply this principle to the unborn but not to certain criminals is to apply it inconsistently. "How can you oppose the killing of the unborn, when you favor the killing of certain criminals? Be consistent!"

The answer to this should be obvious. The cases are dissimilar. The unborn are all of them innocent while criminals in general are not. This is a difference that makes a moral difference; it is a difference that justifies a difference in treatment. No doubt principles should be applied to like cases in a like manner. But there is no inconsistency in refusing to apply a principle to cases that are relevantly dissimilar.

One who is 'pro-life' need not hold the absurd view that in no circumstances may human life be taken. For surely there are circumstances in which it is morally permissible, and perhaps even morally obligatory, to take human life. Self-defense is one case, just war is another, and capital punishment is a third. Indeed, it precisely because one is pro-life that one will defend oneself and others from murderers using means up to and including the talking of their lives!

This is all so obvious that I am astonished that people routinely repeat the charge that it is inconsistent to support both a right to life for the unborn and the death penalty. Where is the inconsistency? There is no logical inconsistency and there is no inconsistency in the application of a principle.

Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent.

P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat to the life of the mother).

P2. Capital punishment for certain offences is morally justified.

The question, then, is whether (P1) and (P2) are logically consistent. To say that two propositions are logically consistent is to say that they can both be true. To say that two propositions are logically inconsistent is to say that they cannot both be true. To show that two propositions are logically consistent it is not necessary to show that they are true; it suffices to show that it is possible that they be true. Thus, BV is a world class runner is logically consistent with BV is a world class mountain biker even though both propositions are (spectacularly!) false.

Now are (P1) and (P2) logically consistent in the sense lately defined? Obviously they are. Suppose that the right to life is grounded in the potentiality to develop into something to which one accords person-status, where a person is a rights-possessor. This is a possible view, and indeed one actually held by many. Any Aristotelian worth his salt will be able to spell it out coherently and perhaps even persuasively. Suppose also that a similarly coherent case is made for (P2). One will then have made a case for the possibility of their both being true. So why should anyone think that (P1) and (P2) are inconsistent? On the face of it, they are logically consistent.

So why do so many people think they are inconsistent? Perhaps these people are not concerned with the question of logical consistency, which is a relation between or among propositions. Perhaps they are thinking in terms of consistency in the application of a principle. Consistency in this sense is not a relation between or among propositions, but involves a person who applies a principle to cases that it may or may not subsume.  The first type of consistency is purely logical; the second is pragmatic.

To apply a principle consistently is to apply it to all like cases in a like manner. So if the principle is to cherish, value, uphold human life, then perhaps their thought is that to apply this principle to the unborn but not to certain criminals is to apply it inconsistently. "How can you oppose the killing of the unborn, when you favor the killing of certain criminals? Be consistent!"

The answer to this should be obvious. The cases are dissimilar. The unborn are all of them innocent while criminals in general are not. This is a difference that makes a moral difference; it is a difference that justifies a difference in treatment. No doubt principles should be applied to like cases in a like manner. But there is no inconsistency in refusing to apply a principle to cases that are relevantly dissimilar.

One who is 'pro-life' need not hold the absurd view that in no circumstances may human life be taken. For surely there are circumstances in which it is morally permissible, and perhaps even morally obligatory, to take human life. Self-defense is one case, just war is another, and capital punishment is a third. Indeed, it precisely because one is pro-life that one will defend oneself and others from murderers using means up to and including the talking of their lives!

This is all so obvious that I am astonished that people routinely repeat the charge that it is inconsistent to support both a right to life for the unborn and the death penalty. Where is the inconsistency? There is no logical inconsistency and there is no inconsistency in the application of a principle.