More on Embryos

Although I am in full sympathy with the position on the humanity of the embryo staked out by Professor George and Michael S. in recent posts, I have to say that I’m not convinced that George’s philosophical argument adequately responds to Eduardo’s challenge.

Eduardo is asking whether there is some principled way to distinguish between embryos and more fully developed humans – such as infants – that would lead us to a different conclusion about the morality of destroying embryos in connection with potentially life-saving research than we would reach with respect to infants.  He’s suggesting that we do have some sort of intuition (“I think we by and large do favor certain life stages over others, particularly at the earliest stages of development”) that does suggest to us that there is such a distinction, and he’s searching for the reasoning behind that.

In his “Embryo Ethics” article, George in essence argues that for Eduardo (or anyone else) to make a principled argument that embryos are morally distinguishable from more fully developed human beings, that person has to identify some acquired characteristic that allows him to make this distinction, and that this acquired characteristic would have to be some sort of capacity for certain mental functions.  George concludes every such capacity one could identify is equally present in the embryo in a nascent, undeveloped form – it simply isn’t immediately exercisable in the embryo.   What gives every human equal moral worth is that innate capacity, not the ability to exercise it;  since that’s present in every embryo, there’s no tenable moral distinction between embryos and more fully developed humans.

I think that Eduardo’s intuition about the distinctions “we by and large do” make is in fact a recognition that most of society today is NOT convinced by one of the philosophical arguments that George lays out to support his conclusion that these distinctions are untenable.  But most of society avoids confronting the consequences of rejecting that argument because it deludes itself into thinking that it agrees with another one of George’s arguments. Let me explain.

One of the arguments George makes for rejecting the ability to exercise a capacity as morally significant is that the difference between an immediately exercisable capacity and an undeveloped capacity is a mere quantitative difference – the more fully developed human who can exercise her mental capacity just has more of the mental capacity than she had as an embryo.  George argues “A mere quantitative difference (having more or less of the same feature, such as the development of a basic natural capacity) cannot by itself be a justificatory basis for treating different entities in radically different ways.”

Another argument George makes is that the difference between the two types of capacities is a qualitative difference that we don’t think should be a legitimate basis of distinction, because we all fundamentally believe that at least the humans we do conclude are worthy of full moral rights are all entitled to the same full moral rights.  George says it much better that I can (no surprise), so let me quote him on this:  “. . . the acquired qualities that could be proposed as criteria for personhood come in varying and continuous degrees:  there are an infinite number of degrees of the relevant developed abilities or dispositions, such as for self-consciousness or rationality.  So, if human beings were worthy of full moral respect only because of such qualities, then, since such qualities come in varying degrees, no account could be given of why basic rights are not possessed by human beings in varying degrees.  The proposition that all human beings are created equal would be relegated to the status of a myth; since some people are more rational than others (that is, have developed that capacity to a greater extent than others), some people would be greater in dignity than others, and the rights of the superiors would trump those of the inferiors.”

I think most of society accepts the qualitative argument – that’s what’s enshrined in all our civil rights laws.  However, it doesn’t really accept the quantitative argument. And I’m not sure that George presents (at least in this excerpt of his argument) a really compelling philosophical reason for accepting it.  Most of society does, as Eduardo suggests, think that there is some morally significant distinction based on how much mental capacity a human can actually manifest.   How else can you explain a society that has no trouble accepting selective abortion or destruction of embryos created through IVF if there’s some indication that the developing embryo or fetus will be severely disabled (ie, have less of a capacity for mental functioning), while it (at least rhetorically) balks at selective abortion or destruction of embryos created through IVF if there’s some indication that the developing embryo or fetus will be a woman rather than a man?

This is why I agree with George that Eduardo is quite wrong in claiming that most people would “find some random way to choose” whether to rescue the disabled person in one room or the healthy person in the other.  If the disability is mental, rather than physical, and if it is severe, rather than mild, I don’t think most would even think they need to bother claiming they are being guided some sort of random criteria.  If the disability is physical, many might try to disguise what they’re doing, but it wouldn’t affect the outcome – witness the numbers of abortions conducted on children diagnosed in utero with cleft palate.  As I’ve argued elsewhere, I agree with both George and Michael S. that this is a great tragedy.  And I think that society's willingness to start with accepting the quantitative  distinction can't help but lead it towards getting more and more comfortable with accepting putatively quantitative distinctions that in fact bleed into qualitative distinctions.  But I think that we either need to come up with even stronger philosophical arguments about why that is an untenable position, or perhaps accept that our strongest arguments are not philosophical ones.

Lisa