Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Animalism, Abortion, and a Future Like Ours

  • Published:
The Journal of Ethics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Marquis’ future-like-ours argument against the morality of abortion assumes animalism—a family of theories according to which we are animals. Such an assumption is theoretically useful for various reasons, e.g., because it provides the theoretical underpinning for a reply to the contraception-abstinence objection. However, the connection between the future-like-ours argument and one popular version of animalism can prove lethal to the former, or so I argue in this paper.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See Snowdon (1990, 2014), Olson (1997a, b, 2004, 2007, 2015), Van Inwagen (1990) for contemporary formulations of animalism and Carter (1982) and Wiggins (1980) for some of their ancestors. Mark Johnston’s works are also frequently associated with animalism; for instance, see Johnston (1987). Recent surveys include Blatti (2014), Bailey (2015), Sauchelli (2018a: Chapter 5), and Thornton (2016). DeGrazia (2005, 2012) provide further discussion on the connection between animalism and various issues in bioethics.

  2. See Mackie (1999) and Tzinman (2018) for the view that an organism can persist as a dead organism. On this understanding of the consequences of the identity conditions of organisms, animalism entails that we can become corpses (dead organisms). I will not discuss this version of animalism in the rest of the paper.

  3. Sauchelli (2017) includes several distinctions between essential and non-essential animalism.

  4. Boonin (2003), DeGrazia (2012), McMahan (2002) and Steinbock (2011).

  5. The original argument is in Marquis (1989). Subsequent versions—all theoretically nearly equivalent—are proposed in Marquis (1997, 2002, 2006, 2007, 2013).

  6. See also Vogelstein (2016) and Sauchelli (2018b).

  7. See Conee (1999), Mills (2013) and Shoemaker (2007).

  8. The terms ‘zygote’, ‘embryo’, ‘pre-embryo’, and ‘foetus’ are not used consistently in the literature. In my usage, some of the stages that they refer to may overlap. I use ‘pre-embryo’ to refer to the (alleged) entity that is supposed to exist after fertilisation but before the fourteenth–sixteenth day after fertilisation. A zygote is a fertilised egg. The developing individual is regarded as an embryo from after the pre-embryonic stage to the eighth or ninth week after fertilisation. After this period, some medical texts call the developing individual a foetus.

  9. The synchornic conditions of identity of an individual are here understood as the conditions that an entity should satisfy at a time to count as the individual it is (e.g., having mental properties to be a person). The diachronic conditions of identity of an individual specify those features that an entity should possess to continue to be what it is (e.g., having some properly connected memories to count as the same person over time).

  10. See Evnine (2011) for a recent critical introduction to the notion of constitution. I assume that constitution is a one-to-one relation (while composition can be a one-to-many relation) and that the identity conditions of a constituent and what is constituted may differ as, for example, in the case of a statue and the lump of clay that constitutes it.

  11. Olson (1997a, b, 2007: 27–29, 2015).

  12. See Clarke (2010). Other recent discussions include Boniolo & Carrara (2004), Dupré (2014), Guay and Pradeu (2016), Hull (1992), Pepper and Herron (2008), Pradeau (2010), Wilson (2010) and Wolfe (2010).

  13. Olson (1997a: 126–131). In what follows, I will focus only on the identity conditions of human organisms.

  14. I will not discuss the distinction between events and processes here and will freely re-phrase some of my formulations in terms of each. See Stout (2003) and Steward (2013) for recent works on their difference(s).

  15. Olson (1997a: 137).

  16. One of the reasons is that someone may hold that questions about the numerical identity of organisms are better settled than questions about the numerical identity of lives.

  17. Olson (2007: 28).

  18. Olson thinks that we should refrain from using the concept of constitution in metaphysics. My use of the concept here should not be taken to suggest that it is part of the ‘canonical’ formulation of Olson’s version of animalism.

  19. Marquis (2007: 400).

  20. “Accordingly, morally permissible abortions will be rare indeed unless, perhaps, they occur so early in pregnancy that a fetus is not yet definitely an individual” (Marquis 1989: 194). “Such cases [i.e., possible exceptions to the cases discussed by Marquis] include abortion after rape and abortion during the first 14 days after conception when there is an argument that the fetus is not definitely an individual” (Marquis 1997: 83). Marquis slightly modifies his argument in (2013), but I do not think that what he says there is substantially different from my reconstruction of the main core of his argument.

  21. See Bradley (2004), Feldman (1992) and Nagel (1970) for discussions on the deprivational account of the harm or badness of death. McMahan (2002) is an extensive study of the ethics of killing.

  22. Marquis (2007: 399).

  23. See Harman (2003) for a discussion of the moral relevance of potentiality.

  24. See Bradley (2009), Setiya (2014) and Silverstein (2013) for discussions.

  25. See Norcross (1990).

  26. I will assume that abstinence and contraception are morally equivalent for our purposes here.

  27. See Bradley (2009) for discussion.

  28. Contraception or abstinence may be wrong for other reasons, just not for those directly relevant to Marquis’ argument. Marquis claims that “[t]he matter that is important concerns the moral implications of the fact that the embryo that is the precursor of the present stage of me is one thing whereas the sperm and UFO [unfertilised ovum] that are the precursors of the present stage of me are two things. MP appears plausible because it seems plausible to base the wrongness of killing on the loss to a victim of her, not someone else’s future. A necessary condition of this being so is that the future life that is lost would have been the actual life of the same individual who dies prematurely, and who was, therefore, the individual who was only the ‘bearer of that potential’” (Marquis 2002: 77–78).

  29. See Smith and Brogaard (2003: 75). See also Morris (2012) for a good criticism of the application of a substance-ontology to the metaphysics of human development.

  30. For instance, Snowdon lists the claim that “[a]n organism or animal of our kind acquires life and existence somewhere during the period which starts with conceptions and terminates with the existence of the foetus” as one (relevant to his discussion of animalism) uncontroversial thesis, Snowdon (2014: 113). The ‘somewhere’ is what is at issue here.

  31. The three claims in the disjunction are not equivalent, but they are each sufficient for my purposes. See Hershenov (2016) for a discussion of animalism and four-dimensionalism (and the related temporal parts-jargon).

  32. Mills (2008).

  33. Mills (2008: 328). See also Davies (2014), Findlay et al. (2007), Morris (2012), Sandler (2015: 39–42) and Schoenwolf et al. (2015: 33–42) for various descriptions of our beginning.

  34. Mills provides further reasons for believing in the identity between the fertilised and the unfertilised egg in Mills (2008: 332–333).

  35. This way of describing the event of fertilisation is taken from Sandler (2015: 40).

  36. DeGrazia agrees with the claim that psychological views of our nature have a foetus problem: these views seem to imply that we were never foetuses. See DeGrazia (2005: 31). The term ‘foetus’ is used here in a broad sense that includes any stage of early pre-birth human development.

  37. See Baker (2000, 2005) for one version of the psychological approach to our nature.

  38. Olson (1997a: 101).

  39. A negative version of this principle would be that a human organism does not cease to exist if it loses some of its capacities, provided that the above three requirements are satisfied. Call this the Becoming-through-loss Principle for the Diachronic Identity of Human Organisms (BLPO).

  40. The main steps of the argument are as follows: (1) Suppose that a foetus has developed into an adult human organism. (2) This animal is where you are now. (3) This animal has your nervous system; thus, it can probably think your thoughts. (4) Thus, you are this animal. Denying premise (2) would generate the too many thinkers problem; roughly, if you can think and the animal can think (premise 4), then there seems to be two entities thinking where you are now—which seems one too many.

  41. In case (2) is preferred, we should slightly modify this last claim—if the zygote is one of my temporal parts, then also the egg is.

  42. Schoenwolf et al. (2015: 35).

  43. My claim is not to be understood as a general principle to be applied to all organisms or cell divisions. I think that it is very hard to state plausible general principles to be universally applied.

  44. See Lewis (1976/83).

  45. See Findlay et al. (2007) for a survey of the astonishing variety of ways in which embryos can be created.

  46. Koch-Hershenov (2006) is relevant here.

  47. See Dupré and Nicholson (2018) for a very recent statement of a processual approach to biology.

References

  • Bailey, Andrew. 2015. Animalism. Philosophy Compass 10(12): 867–883.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Lynne Rudder. 2000. Persons and Bodies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Baker, Lynne Rudder. 2005. When Does a Person Being? Social Philosophy and Policy 22(2): 25–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blatti, Stephan. 2014. Animalism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/animalism/. Accessed Nov 2018.

  • Boonin, David. 2003. A Defense of Abortion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Boniolo, Giovanni, and Massimiliano Carrara. 2004. On Biological Identity. Biology and Philosophy 19(3): 443–457.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, Ben. 2004. When is Death Bad for the One Who Dies? Noûs 38(1): 1–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, Ben. 2009. Well-being and Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Carter, W.R. 1982. Do Zygotes Become People? Mind 91(361): 77–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, Ellen. 2010. The Problem of Biological Individuality. Biological Theory 5(4): 312–325.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Conee, Earl. 1999. Metaphysics and the Morality of Abortion. Mind 108(432): 619–646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davies, Jamie A. 2014. Life Unfolding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DeGrazia, David. 2005. Human Identity and Bioethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • DeGrazia, David. 2012. Creation Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Dupré, John. 2014. Animalism and the Persistence of Human Organisms. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 52: 6–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dupré, John, and Daniel J. Nicholson. 2018. A Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology. In Everything Flows, ed. John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicholson. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Evnine, Simon. 2011. Constitution and Composition. Protosociology 27: 212–235.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman, Fred. 1992. Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Findaly, J.K., et al. 2007. Human Embryo: A Biological Definition. Human Reproduction 22(4): 905–911.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guay, Alexandre, and Thomas Pradeu (eds.). 2016. Individuals Across the Sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harman, Elizabeth. 2003. The Potentiality Problem. Philosophical Studies 114(1–2): 173–198.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hershenov, David. 2016. Four-Dimensional Animalism. In Animalism, ed. Stephan Blatti and Paul Snowdon, 208–228. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Hull, David. 1992. Individual. In Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Evelyn Fox Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, Mark. 1987. Human Beings. Journal of Philosophy 84: 59–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Koch-Hershenov, Rose. 2006. Totipotency, Twinning, and Ensoulment at Fertilisation. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 31: 139–164.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, David. 1976/1983. Survival and Identity. Reprinted with Postscripts in David Lewis. In Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, 55–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Mackie, David. 1999. Personal Identity and Dead People. Philosophical Studies 95: 219–242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 1989. Why Abortion is Immoral. Journal of Philosophy 86: 183–202.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 1997. An Argument that Abortion is Wrong. In Ethics in Practice, ed. Hugh LaFollette, 91–102. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 2002. Does Metaphysics have Implications for the Morality of Abortion? Southwest Philosophy Review 18: 73–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 2006. Abortion and the Beginning and End of Human Life. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34(1): 16–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 2007. Abortion Revisited. In The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics, ed. Bonnie Steinbock, 395. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marquis, Don. 2013. The Deliberately Induced Abortion of a Human Pregnancy Is Not Ethically Justiflable. In Contemporary Debates in Bioethics, ed. Arthur L. Caplan and Robert Arp, 120–128. Chichester: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  • McMahan, Jeff. 2002. The Ethics of Killing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mills, Eugene. 2008. The Egg and I: Conception, Identity, and Abortion. Philosophical Review 117(3): 323–348.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mills, Eugene. 2013. Early Abortion and Personal Ontology. Acta Analytica 28: 19–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morris, Jason. 2012. Substance Ontology Cannot Determine the Moral Status of Embryos. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 37: 331–350.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, Thomas. 1970. Death. Noûs 4(1): 73–80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Norcross, Alastair. 1990. Killing, Abortion, and Contraception: A Reply to Marquis. The Journal of Philosophy 87(5): 268–277.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Eric. 1997a. The Human Animal. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Eric. 1997b. Was I Ever a Fetus? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 57(1): 95–110.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Eric. 2004. Animalism and the Corpse Problem. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 82(2): 265–274.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Eric. 2007. What Are We? A Study in Personal Ontology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Olson, Eric. 2015. What Does it Mean to Say That We Are Animals? Journal of Consciousness Studies 22(11–12): 84–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pepper, John, and Matthew Herron. 2008. Does Biology Need an Organism Concept? Biological Reviews 83: 621–627.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pradeau, Thomas. 2010. What is an Organism? History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32: 247–267.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sadler, T.W. 2015. Langman’s Medical Embryology. 13th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sauchelli, Andrea. 2017. The Animal, the Corpse, and the Remnant-Person. Philosophical Studies 174(1): 205–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sauchelli, Andrea. 2018a. Personal Identity and Applied Ethics. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sauchelli, Andrea. 2018b. The Future-Like-Ours Argument, Animalism, and Mereological Universalism. Bioethics 32(3): 199–204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoenwolf, Gary, et al. 2015. Larsen’s Human Embryology. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders.

    Google Scholar 

  • Setiya, Kieran. 2014. The Ethics of Existence. Philosophical Perspectives 28(1): 291–301.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shoemaker, David. 2007. Personal Identity and Practical Concerns. Mind 116(462): 317–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Silverstein, Harry. 2013. The Evil of Death One More Time: Parallels between Time and Space. In The Metaphysics and Ethics of Death, ed. J.S. Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Barry, and Berit Brogaard. 2003. Sixteen Days. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28(1): 45–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Snowdon, Paul. 1990. Persons, Animals, and Ourselves. In The Person and the Human Mind: Issues in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. C. Gill, 83–107. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snowdon, Paul. 2014. Persons, Animals, Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Steinbock, Bonnie. 1992/2011. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  • Steward, Helen. 2013. Processes, Continuants, and Individuals. Mind 122(487): 781–812.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stout, Rowland. 2003. The Life of a Process. In Pragmatic Process, ed. G. Debrock, 145–157. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thornton, Allison K. 2016. Varieties of Animalism. Philosophy Compass 11(9): 515–526.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tzinman, Rina. 2018. Is Romeo Dead? On the Persistence of Organisms. Synthese 195(9): 4081–4105.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vogelstein, Eric. 2016. Metaphysics and the Future-Like-Ours Argument Against Abortion. Journal of Ethics 20(4): 419–434.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wiggins, David. 1980. Sameness and Substance. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Jack A. 2010. Ontological Butchery: Organism Concepts and Biological Generalizations. Philosophy of Science 67: 3.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolfe, Charles T. 2010. Do Organisms Have an Ontological Status? History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 32(2–3): 195–232.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful suggestions.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, NT, Hong Kong SAR

    Andrea Sauchelli

Authors
  1. Andrea Sauchelli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Sauchelli.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Sauchelli, A. Animalism, Abortion, and a Future Like Ours. J Ethics 23, 317–332 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09298-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10892-019-09298-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation