An Argument from Agnosticism

By Alex Hyun

11-16-06

 

Abstract

 

            In this essay, I argue that abortion is always reckless endangerment.  Reckless

endangerment is committed when we perform an action that has a high or inscrutable

probability of resulting in the death of a person.  Since, as I attempt to show, the probability that a zygote/embryo/fetus is a person is inscrutable, it follows that an action that is aimed at the destruction of this entity (i.e., abortion) is a clear example of reckless endangerment.  The ethical system I adopt as a foundation is Virtue Ethics, and I propose that the virtue of justice entails respect and honor for tights.  Since reckless endangerment fails at respecting rights to life, it follows that abortion is a failure to respect rights to life.  Therefore, the just person, with a strong respect for rights, will oppose abortions.

 

An Argument from Agnosticism

 

            The concept of personhood is usually the most important issue in the abortion debate.  Nearly all “pro-choicers” that I have talked to would believe that abortion is morally impermissible if they believed that the developing entity inside the woman’s womb was a person.  These pro-choicers advocate a definition of personhood that precludes the fetus, and therefore they do not believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent person.  The issue of personhood is also central to most “pro-lifers’” opposition to abortion: convinced that the fetus is a person early in its development, they vehemently condemn abortion, believing it to be murder.  Because the central point of contention is this debate is the ontological status of the fetus, a resolution to this conflict can only be achieved by considering this issue of personhood.  I contend that upon a serious inquiry into this issue of personhood, as well as the issues of reckless endangerment and justice, it can be confidently concluded that the just person will oppose abortions.

            It is appropriate to begin this argumentative essay with a defense of my chosen ethical foundation.  The ethical foundation best suited for application to the abortion issue is Virtue Ethics.  According to Annette C. Baier, there are two distinctive methods of moral theorizing: the “mosaic” method and the “broad brushstroke” method.1   The latter method seeks to build an exhaustive and coherent account of morality by establishing one or a few foundational guiding principles that can be applied to all moral conundrums.  The mosaic method, on the other hand, seeks to deal with a great number of specific moral conundrums, and then develops a near-exhaustive moral system by collecting the results of all these specific inquiries.  While the broad brushstroke method has been the ruling paradigm for much of the history of moral theorizing, it is woefully inadequate.  In its Occamian zeal for simplicity, the broad brushstroke methods end up attaining a coherent moral system at the cost of having to endure some moral absurdities.  For instance, consider how Utilitarianism and Kantianism – two major broad brushstroke moral theories – deal with issues relevant to the abortion debate.  Central to the abortion issue is the issues of personhood and rights to life: does the fetus have a right to life?  Is it immoral to kill the fetus?  Is the fetus a person?  The Utilitarianism response would be to say that, even if the fetus was a full-fledged person, it still has a right to life only insofar as its life results in more happiness than its death.  According to James Rachels, Utilitarianism says that, “in deciding what to do, we should, therefore, ask what course of conduct would promote the greatest amount of happiness for all those who will be affected.  Morality requires that we do what is best from that point of view.”3   If the killing of an innocent person would result in a net increase of happiness, then an uncompromised Utilitarianism seems to suggest that such a murder becomes morally obligatory.  Therefore, I propose that Utilitarianism should not be applied to the issue of abortion: any moral theory that would sanction a convenient and happiness-producing abortion even if that abortion was the murder of an innocent person is a morally absurd theory.  Kantianism also entails unacceptable conclusions about the issues relevant to the abortion debate.  A ruling notion in Kant’s morality is that entities are persons by virtue of: 1) their possession of desires and goals, and 2) their possession of rational faculties.3   These two characteristics are supposed to distinguish persons from animals, who Kant thought had neither goals nor rational faculties.3   But surely Kant’s criteria for personhood – and therefore, for the possession of rights – is too restrictive.  What about new-born babies, who, according to Dr. Norman Geisler, will not even have self-consciousness until about 18 months of age?2   In what meaningful sense does my new-born cousin, Marianna, have the ability to formulate long-term goals via the exercise of rational faculties?  Applied to the abortion debate, Kant’s theory of personhood would indeed exclude the fetus.  But I propose that Kantianism should not be applied to the abortion debate because its criteria for personhood also seems to exclude infants (as well as profoundly retarded people like my uncle, come to think of it), and that is morally absurd.

            Broad brushstroke theories like Utilitarianism and Kantianism have a lot of advantages, but being hell-bent to stick to a couple general moral principles leads to absurdities.  Therefore, we should consider the issue of abortion as a unique case, and this will require us to adopt a more mosaic method of moral theorizing.  The reason that I choose Virtue Ethics as a foundation to the solution to the abortion debate is that Virtue Ethics is more facilitative of the mosaic method.  By developing the entailments of one of the many virtues, perhaps we will discover that the virtuous person will oppose abortions.  And, in fact, I believe that the virtue of justice is such that the just person will oppose abortions.

            What does the virtue of justice demand?  The reader will, I hope, forgive me for not providing an exhaustive account of justice and all that it entails.  But a commonsensical component of the concept of justice is respect for the rights of persons.  For example, a just person will respect his neighbor’s right to property by refraining from stealing his lawn gnomes; if a person does steal the neighbor’s lawn gnomes, he is not respecting the right to property, and is thus unjust.  A more relevant example of rights in the context of the abortion debate is the right to life.  The just person will respect and honor rights to life: and this means that the just person will not willingly kill an innocent person.  But does respecting the right to life only entail abstinence from intentional murder, or does it also entail abstinence from other acts?  The latter is obviously the case.  One can fail to respect rights to life simply by being reckless.  For instance, consider fictitious mother and housewife Joanna.  Joanna has twin baby boys, and they can be quite a handful.  During a hot summer day, Joanna loads the babies in to the car to do some errands.  Upon arriving at the store, Joanna, who dreads the idea of shopping with two fussy babies, decides to leave her boys in the car.  Joanna is aware that the temperature is 105 degrees Fahrenheit, and she has heard that babies can die if left in hot cars.  Still, she decides to leave the babies in the car since she is fairly sure that she can complete her shopping before the babies die from the heat.  Obviously, Joanna’s behavior is immoral, but how exactly is it immoral?  One valid condemnation of Joanna’s behavior is that it is appallingly unjust.  The just person respects rights to life; respecting rights to life entails abstinence from recklessly endanger persons; Joann’s babies were persons; Joanna recklessly endangered the babies’ lives; therefore, Joanna is unjust.  Whatever else is horrendous about Joanna’s behavior, it is most certainly unjust.

            The concept of reckless endangerment, then, plays an essential role in the concept of the just person.  Since the concept of reckless endangerment is central to my pro-life argument, it would be wise to define “reckless endangerment” more clearly:

                        Reckless Endangerment Principle (REP)

If a person P performs and action A with a noetic structure N,

P commits reckless endangerment if N contains either: a) the

belief that there is a significantly high probability that P’s

performance of A will cause the serious physical injury or

death of a person, or b) the belief that there is an inscrutable

probability that P’s performance of A will cause the physical

injury or death of a person.

This principle, if true, explains why Joanna’s behavior qualifies as reckless endangerment: Joanna realized that there was a significantly high probability that leaving the babies in the car would result in the death of the babies, yet she did it anyway.  Precisely what it means for a probability to be “significantly high” is a very difficult question.  Fortunately, we need not deal with it here, for I believe that the relevant issue for the abortion debate is what it means for a probability to be inscrutable – and whether or not belief that one’s actions has an inscrutable probability of killing a person qualifies one for reckless endangerment.  It certainly seems that it does.  For instance, consider Sebastian, who is on a tour at a chemical factory.  One of the employees at the factory gives Sebastian a thermos of “Chemical XYZ,” which the employee insists is simply a high-quality mineral water.  Sebastian accepts the gift, but is later confronted by a factory manager who warns Sebastian that Chemical XYZ is actually a tasteless and deadly poison, and that the employee who gave it to him is a malicious and untrustworthy person.  Since this manager seems trustworthy and seems to know what he is talking about, Sebastian is resolved to throw away his thermos of Chemical XYZ – until, that is, a second employee confronts him.  The second employee reassures Sebastian that Chemical XYZ is indeed mineral water, and that the manager is a chronic liar with a history of mental instability.  But then Sebastian is confronted by a third employee, who testifies that the manager is in fact a perfectly honest and sane person.  At this point, Sebastian is thoroughly agnostic about the true identity of Chemical XYZ: indeed, for Sebastian, the probability of Chemical XYZ being a benign substance is inscrutable.  Now, say Sebastian returns home, and his wife, who drinks only mineral water, demands that Sebastian go to the store to purchase her a delicious bottle of “Evian.”  Sebastian, however, is pretty tired from his trip to the chemical factory.  Here is the important question: would it be reckless endangerment for Sebastian to offer his thirsty wife the container of Chemical XYZ?  I am convinced that it would be.  From Sebastian’s point of view, the probability of Chemical XYZ being a deadly poison is inscrutable.  Applying the REP, we see that Sebastian would be guilty of reckless endangerment if he offered the thermos to his wife.

            The REP, then, captures a lot of what we believe about reckless endangerment.  This is highly relevant to the issue of abortion.  As I explained before, reckless endangerment is unjust because it neglects rights to life.  If abortion can be shown to have an inscrutable probability of resulting in the destruction of a person, then abortion qualifies as reckless endangerment – and is thus unjust.  Since abortion unquestionably results in the destruction of the fetus, the relevant question becomes: what is the probability that the fetus is a person?  I believe that this probability is inscrutable, and therefore abortion is reckless endangerment.

            Is the probability that the fetus is a person actually inscrutable?  Pro-choicers generally do not believe so.  To defend their position, pro-choicers must propose a set of criteria for personhood.  Unfortunately for them, they have yet to concoct and adequately defend a set of necessary conditions for personhood that mesh sufficiently well with our moral intuitions.  First, consider the criteria proposed by Mary Anne Warren.  Warren proposes some common criteria for personhood:

1) consciousness…and in particular the capacity to feel pain;

2) reasoning (the capacity to solve new and relatively complex problems);

3) self-motivated activity…

4) the capacity to communicate, by whatever means, messages of an

indefinite variety of types…

5) the presence of self-concepts, and self-awareness, either individual

or racial, or both.6

            Warren is very confident in her proposed criteria.  She claims that the veracity of this “alternative way of defining the moral community” is “self-evident.”6   But it is Warren who is confused, and this becomes apparent upon the slightest bit of reflection.  Are there any beings who lack (1)-(5) and are still persons?  Yes: a year ago, my dentist knocked me out with general anesthetic drugs so that he could remove my wisdom teeth painlessly.  While I was in general anaesthesia, I lacked consciousness, reasoning capacities, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts.  Warren believes that any being who lacks these five qualities is not a person, so she ought to believe that I literally lost my personhood for about an hour while I was getting my wisdom teeth removed.  If Warren truly believes this, God-fearing people should begin praying fervently that Warren never becomes a dentist.  One could imagine Warren knocking her patients out and then pick-pocketing them, having concluded that since they are no longer persons, they no longer have rights to property.

            I propose that since I obviously did not lose my personhood while getting my wisdom teeth removed, Warren’s criteria do not give an accurate depiction of necessary properties for personhood.  Perhaps Warren could defend herself, though: people in general anaesthesia have the capacity to gain consciousness, reason, etc.  But of course, so do fetuses – it just takes them longer.  And since Warren is trying to concoct a definition of personhood that precludes the fetus, this will not do.  Perhaps Warren could say that a properly-functioning person exemplifies (1)-(5), and a person in general anaesthesia, who has been sedated, is a person who is not functioning properly.  But of course, it could then be said that the fetus is also a person who has yet to begin functioning properly.  It seems obvious that, in spite of Warren’s self-confidence, her criteria are too counter-intuitive to establish a plausible account of personhood that precludes the fetus.

            A second criterion for personhood that is common is the possession of human body parts.  This criterion is used by pro-choicers to show that the zygote and embryo cannot be a person, for it lacks any human-looking parts.  Interestingly, this criterion is also popular among pro-lifers, many of whom use images of fetuses to show that the development of hands, feet, ears, etc., occur very early.  But I think that the concept of personhood does not necessarily require a being to have human-looking body parts.  On this point, I agree with Warren: “In searching for such criteria, it is useful to look beyond the set of people with whom we are acquainted, and ask how we would decide whether a totally alien being was a person or not.”6   It is preposterously anthropocentric to claim that the possession of human body parts is a necessary property of personhood.  Surely an alien being who possessed self-consciousness and reasoning abilities will qualify for personhood, even if he lacks hands, arms, noses, ears, etc.  Therefore, the possession of human body parts is not necessary for the possession of personhood; and therefore, the fact that a zygote lacks these body parts does not necessarily exclude it from personhood (and by the way, I also think that the possession of human body parts is not sufficient for personhood.  Therefore, whether or not the use of fetus pictures is a legitimate way for pro-lifers to argue is debatable). 

            A third criterion for personhood is the presence of brain waves.  A girl in my Argumentation and Debate class told me that early abortions are not immoral because they only destroy something without brain waves.  First, this criterion fails for the same reason that the criteria of human body parts fail: it is logically possible for a being to qualify for personhood, and yet lack brain waves.  By this I mean that no logical contradiction arises when we postulate a “brainwaveless” being who possesses self-consciousness, reasoning, etc.  It is at least logically possible that we meet an alien race whose evolutionary development was so different from our own that their species did not develop a physiology that emitted brainwaves.  One might object at this point: is it not true that we generally accept the cessation of brainwaves as sufficient evidence that a person is dead – and therefore, has lost personhood?  As Maggie Gallagher, quoted by “Eve Teshnet,” puts it:

We accept the cessation of brain waves as evidence of death in

adult human beings only because we conclude (after repeated

 observation) that once the brain stops waving it never starts up

again.  If brains generally shut down and started up again, then

the stopping of the brain would no longer signal death.4

The correspondence between brain waves and personhood is an accidental, or non-essential, relation.  We generally associate brain waves with personhood because the persons we see have brain waves.  But this in no way entails that brain waves are necessary for personhood any more than our association of construction workers with hardhats entails that the possession of a hardhat is necessary to qualify as a construction worker.  Since brain waves are not logically necessary for personhood, the fact that zygotes and early fetuses might lack brain waves does not show that these entities are not persons.

            A final criterion that pro-choicers often propose is viability.  The general idea is that if a fetus cannot survive apart from the mother, then it is not really an independent person.  Independent persons can breathe on their own, circulate their blood on their own, etc.; and since fetuses are not viable in this sense, it follows that they are not really independent persons.  But of course, this is ridiculous.  The reason that Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous violinist analogy is so powerful is that the famous violinist is obviously a person – in spite of his inability to survive apart from the host.5    Clearly, a person need not be able to survive on his own to still be a person.

            These four criteria proposals – the possession of certain psychological qualities, the possession of human body parts, the possession of brain waves, and the possession of viability – and fail in another way: they are all unacceptably arbitrary.  When the question of the fetus’s personhood is raised, pro-choicers begin to ponder the physical and functional development of the fetus.  A concentration on these traits is understandable since they are all we can observe.  But in the history of human thought, a very popular view of the self has been the existence of some immaterial “soul” or “mind.”  Why should we not think that being a “person” means to possess an immaterial (and hence, not necessarily empirically verifiable) soul?  Or why should we not believe that to be “person” means to be made in the image of God?  These non-physical and non-functional accounts of personhood are not, I am convinced, obviously false.  When defining personhood, there is no reason to tie ourselves down to only definitions that materialists and physicalists would accept.  Since the correct criteria for personhood could plausibly include a reference to these non-natural ideas, it becomes clear that a staunch adherence to wholly physical and functional accounts of personhood is an arbitrary delimitation of the range of legitimate possibilities.

            If pro-choicers cannot rationally demonstrate that the fetus is probably not a person (and in fact, it seems that they have a hard time even defining “person”), can pro-lifers rationally demonstrate that the entity inside the mother is a person, perhaps from conception?  I do not see how they could: in any case, let us assume for this argument that they cannot.  We are left in an unsettling position.  Millions of abortions are performed each year, and yet it seems that the most rationally tenable position is agnosticism in regards to the personhood of the fetus.  I propose that this agnosticism is sufficient to demonstrate that abortion is an action that a just person would oppose.  As explained above, just people respect and honor rights to life; reckless endangerment fails to respect and honor rights to life; reckless endangerment is committed when a person performs an action that she believes has an inscrutable probability of causing the death of a person; because we should be agnostic about the ontological status of the fetus, we should believe that there is an inscrutable probability that abortion causes the death of a person; therefore, abortion is reckless endangerment; therefore, abortion fails to respect an honor rights to life; therefore, just people would oppose abortions.

 

                       

           

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

1.  Baier, Annette.  What Do Women Want in a Moral Theory.  “Philosophy 122: Introduction to        Ethics,” 2006.

 

2.  Geisler, Norman.  Frequently Asked Questions: Common-Sense Answers To Arguments Against Abortion. < http://www.texlife.org/docs/faq.html#1>, October 25, 2006.      

 

3.  Rachels, James.  The Elements of Moral Philosophy.  New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003.

 

4.  Teshnet, Eve.  Questions for Objectivists.  <http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:9BeOo8ZJiN8J:randquestions.blogspot.com/2002_03_17_randquestions_archive.html+Maggie+Gallagher+%22the+absence+of+brain+waves+in+an+unborn%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1>, October 20, 2006.   

 

5.  Thomson, Judith.  Judith Jarvis Thomson: A Defense of Abortion.  <http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm>, October 20, 2006.   

 

6.  Warren, Anne Warren.  The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion.  Class Handout.