1. No Person Argument: Dualist Version
A. Wrong to kill persons, but not non-persons
B. What is a person?
C. Self-Conscious Being/ /
No Person Argument: Dualist Version (cont)
D. Person: must possess self-consciousness
F. But Human Embryos and Fetuses do not have self-consciousness
G. So, they are not persons
H. So, it is not wrong to kill them, for serious reasons
I. This view: I never was an embryo or fetus /
No Person Argument, Dualist Version (cont)
A. Their view: the embryo came to be at one time, but you and I came to be at another time
B. So, their view: the organism is one thing; the person is another thing /
2. Replies
A. comatose
B. Body-self dualism is false
C. 1. Sensation is a bodily act.
2. So, what senses is a bodily being.
3. But must be the same agent that senses
and that understands (and is self-consc.)/
Replies (cont)
D. What I am is a particular type of animal-organism
E. So, I came to be when this organism came to be
Replies (cont)
F. So, can’t say: organism came to be at one time, person came to be at another time
G. You and I once were fetuses and embryos /
3. No Person Argument: Evaluative Version
A. Another View: I came to be when the embryo came to be, but I wasn’t intrinsically valuable until later (self-consc., etc.)
B. Here: personhood = accidental characteristic --- e.g., basketball player /
4. Reply 1 (to evaluative version)
A. Personhood can’t be an accidental characteristic, or based on one
B. 1: A radical moral difference should be based on a radical ontological difference
human being vs. sperm and ovum: radical difference
Human embryo = human being at one stage /
Reply 2: Arbitrary line-drawing
A. The accidental characteristics proposed as bases:
= a capacity
– immediately exercisable vs. basic natural capacities
B. But: not immediately exercisable capacities
1. infants, persons in reversible coma
2. Arbitrary to select a certain degree of development and ignore a radical difference /
Reply 3: denies equal dignity
A. varying degrees of the developed capacities
B. Some will be "more equal" than others/
IV.4 Sum
D. Basic point: children vs. embryos or fetuses: are the differences morally significant
Size,
Degree of development
Appearance
Degree of dependence
E. Not morally relevant differences /
V. Persons
Basis for: subject of rights: being a person, an individual substance of a rational nature
—comes to be at conception / //