YOU CANNOT HARM PERSONS THAT DO NOT YET EXIST

Charles Pace, in an opinion piece in The Times of Malta of February 4, addresses some points of my own opinion piece of January 16 in the same newspaper.  However, he misses completely the salient point, which I suspect comes from the inability or difficulty of most people to grasp the concept of non-identity which includes the non-existence of a mental life that gives a body personhood with sentience, awareness and interests. Science shows us that while a being starts existing at conception, personhood, which necessarily entails a mental life and an identity over time, starts at 24 weeks of conception when a brain is sufficiently developed to give a foetus at least rudimentary sentience and consciousness of the world. Self-awareness comes even later, after birth. Prior to having a sufficiently developed brain (at least at 24 weeks) a person does not exist at all, and therefore cannot have interests, preferences or desires because there would be no one to have them. At that stage, an organism is only a body with the potential of becoming a person with any interests, and therefore, rights.

Pace acknowledges my point on DNA, but completely misunderstands it. He says that he agrees that DNA is not necessarily unique (he mentions clones as a further example), but says that even then, clones would have as much rights as the person being cloned. He adds that it is not uniqueness that gives us rights. I never said it was. It is sentience, consciousness, interests and a personal identity over time that does. Pace does not even address this point and simply assumes that bodies with only the potential of becoming persons with interests have rights at conception. He produces no arguments to support this logically absurd claim, which would suggest that bodies that have no interests, preferences and desires have a right to have their interests, preferences and desires respected. This is clearly logically absurd, unless of course one’s opinions on the matter rely on religious faith and ensoulment, and the belief – not supported by any evidence at all – that “souls” are what give bodies a personal identity over time (I have dealt with the problems pertaining to this belief in Potential Adam and Potential Eve, and The Ghost in the Machine).

Pace then addresses the question of potential personhood by setting some analogies with problems of their own. For instance, he says: “In my room, I have an empty drawer. Does it have great potential? Imagine if I were to put in it the Koh-i-Noor diamond or de Vallette’s dagger or the Mona Lisa. What potential!  Can I say that this drawer is of great worth because it has this marvelous potential? No, because this potential means emptiness. Greatness, here, comes from the objects I put in it”.

Pace then explains that however, not all potential is just emptiness, because if this were so, we should “shut down all football nurseries and ballet schools because they hold nothing but emptiness”. No, Pace says, “it is not the achieved greatness that is the basis for human caring or rights. Every human right, starting from the right to free expression to the right to life, is about permitting opportunity, not for rewarding achievement”.

Pace is of course correct, but he overlooks the salient point here, that is that prior to having a mental life, a person with interests, desires, preferences and the capacity to be harmed would not even exist at all. Pace simply asserts, without even attempting an argument, that prior to having a mental life with personal interests, and an identity that may be benefitted or harmed, an organism has rights. If this were so, plants would have rights too, but more on this in a moment.

It is true that, as Pace says, “(many things) have in themselves the capability to become better, richer, more developed, more fully expressive of what they are – if given a chance”. However, unless those things have a mental life at all that makes it possible for them to actually experience the world and develop a personal identity over time, any preference on whether that thing or being develops into something “better” (a subjective value judgement), can only be felt and expressed by third-parties, and not the thing or being itself. The thing or being cannot at that point have any preference on whether it exists at all, let alone on whether it is allowed or even assisted to develop into anything better or worse. To give an analogy of my own, a blank canvas has the potential to become a Mona Lisa if a Leonardo Da Vinci decides to paint it. But the canvas, despite the clear potential, doesn’t care either way, and a Leonardo has no duty toward the canvas to paint it.

Pace then exclaims that I would retort that even sperms “have the capability to become a person, so should we give human rights to sperms?”. Pace, like me, would reply by saying no, but does this for the wrong reasons by invoking the DNA fallacy. He says that sperms have no rights “because DNA shows that sperms are a different organism from the born human, even while the latter is the same organism as the embryo and foetus”. Again, the disagreement stems from his evasion of the question of what entails personhood. Pace simply asserts that since a foetus has the same DNA as the born person, it must necessarily have the same (or any) rights – the DNA fallacy all over again.

Pace asserts that the foetus and the born person are the same organism. They are not, and DNA, being just a “genetic code to build and develop bodies” does not make them so. An organism is just a living thing that has an organized structure and can react to stimuli, reproduce, grow, adapt and maintain homeostasis. Organisms include animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and more. And while both plants and born humans may both correctly be classified as living organisms, the morally significant difference is that unlike born humans, plants don’t have a mental life that gives them a personal identity over time, and therefore don’t have any interests at all. We only protect some plants for our own interests, not theirs. Plants themselves cannot be harmed in an experiential sense. Beings with no mental life have no interests at all.

At this point, Pace would retort that human foetuses, unlike plants, have the potential to develop into beings with a mental life that gives them an identity and interests. I have already addressed this, so it is enough for me to say that beings with no mental life at all cannot even have any preference on whether they exist at all, let alone whether they will develop into persons with an experiential welfare. It is only third-parties who in this case may have any such preferences or desires. That’s what makes the Pro-Choice position sensible and rational. It is only third-parties with their own personal identity who may have any preferences on whether to allow or assist any potential “person” to develop into an actual person, or even decide on whether it would be beneficial for a person with a mental identity who would be capable of experiencing the world for better or for worse, to be "created" at all. A potential “person” is only a hypothetical – it does not actually exist except possibly as just living body that may “host” an actual experiential person if the foetus sufficiently grows and develops a brain. DNA shows only potentiality, and the potentiality argument fails through the arguments I have already made both here and elsewhere in my blog.

An abridged version of this blog post has been published on February 13 in The Times of Malta as a letter to the Editor.