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f the unborn is a human being from conception, can it still fail to be a human person? In this episode, I go beyond intuition and show—philosophically—why every human being, at every stage of development, is a human person with a right to life.
TRANSCRIPT:
Many pro-abortion advocates concede that a fetus is a human being from the moment of conception. Yet they still advocate for abortion on the grounds that the fetus—at certain stages of development—is not a human person, deserving of the right to life and protection under the law.
Now, for many people, that clashes with basic intuition. How can a human being not be a person? But the real question is: can we go beyond intuition and actually defend that claim philosophically? Stick around—we’re going to find out.
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Alright! Let’s begin by taking a closer look at the challenge itself—the claim that a human being is not necessarily a human person.
The late Mary Anne Warren, in her 1973 article published in The Monist, titled “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” argued that one of the key markers of personhood is the attainment of consciousness—and in particular, the capacity to feel pain.
Now, this is a pretty common move among pro-abortion advocates. It’s a way of sidestepping pro-life arguments about the immorality of abortion. The idea is this: if a human being before the stage of consciousness—roughly before 24 weeks—isn’t a human person, then it’s morally permissible to kill it without any moral wrongdoing.
So how do we respond?
Well, one approach is to argue that all alternative definitions of personhood fail. The traditional view says that a human being simply is a human person from the moment of conception.
The problem with the alternative criteria—like consciousness, sentience, viability, or birth—is that they tend to either include beings we don’t normally think of as persons or exclude beings we clearly do think are persons.
Now, I’m not going to focus on that line of argument here. If you want more on that, I highly recommend my good friend Trent Horn’s book Persuasive Pro-Life, available at shop.catholic.com.
Instead, I want to take a different route. I want to zero in on a hidden assumption in Warren’s argument—because her conclusion is only as strong as the assumptions it rests on.
Here’s the key: Warren assumes that the physical organism we call a human being can be distinct from a human person—a rational being.
And this idea isn’t new. It actually goes back to Plato and becomes especially influential in modern philosophy through the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes.
Descartes made this view so influential that it now bears his name: Cartesian dualism. According to Descartes, the human being consists of two separate substances—a mental substance (the soul, or res cogitans) and a physical substance (the body, or res extensa).
On this view, what you really are as a person is the thinking self—the res cogitans. The body isn’t essential to your identity as a person; it’s more like a machine you inhabit. Hence the famous phrase: “a ghost in a machine.”
Now, it’s not hard to recognize the similarity with Warren’s view. What she calls a “human being”—the physical organism prior to consciousness—lines up with Descartes’ res extensa. And what she calls a “human person” corresponds to the res cogitans—the rational substance, even though consciousness is not the marker of rationality since non-rational animals have it as well.
So for clarity, let’s call this underlying idea the Cartesian assumption.
And here’s why that matters: Warren’s argument works if—and only if—the Cartesian assumption is true—the assumption that a living human organism (called a human being) can be distinct from a human person. If this is false, then it would be impossible for a human being not to be a human person. In other words, every human being—no matter the stage of development—would be a human person. And if that’s true, then abortion would never be morally permissible.
So here’s the structure of the argument we’re going to defend:
P1: If Cartesian dualism is false, then it is impossible for a human being not to be a human person—that’s to say, the human being in the womb, no matter the stage of development, must be a human person.
P2: Cartesian dualism is false.
C: Therefore, it is impossible for a human being not to be a human person—that’s to say, the human being in the womb, no matter the stage of development, must be a human person.
We’ve already given good reason to accept premise one. So now the task is to defend premise two—to show that Cartesian dualism is false.
And fair warning: to do that, we’re going to have to wade into some deeper philosophical waters.
Let’s start with the first argument—one that comes from the inside, from self-reflection.
Think about what’s happening right now as you watch or listen. You’re seeing or hearing these words, and at the same time, you’re understanding their meaning—assuming I’m being clear enough. It’s not as if one thing is doing the seeing—your body—and something else is doing the understanding—your mind. There’s one unified subject of action: you. You are both sensing and understanding.
This insight is exactly what led St. Thomas Aquinas to conclude that the body is not separate from the person, but essential to who we are. As he writes in the first part of his Summa Theologiae, question 76, article 1:
“It is one and the same man who is conscious both that he understands, and that he senses. But one cannot sense without a body: therefore the body must be some part of man.”
So if you’re the one both sensing and understanding—and sensing requires the body—then your body isn’t something external to you, like a car is to a driver. Your body is part of who you are.
In other words, you are not your soul alone—which allows you to understand, nor your body alone—which allows you to sense. Rather, you are a unity of both. Philosophers call this view hylemorphism (from the Greek words for matter and form).
Here’s the reasoning in a nutshell:
P1: The agent (the individual subject) that understands is identical to the agent that senses.
P2: The agent that senses is the currently existing physical organism.
C1: Therefore, the agent (the individual subject) that understands is the currently existing physical organism.
P3: If the agent that understands is the currently existing physical organism, then Cartesian dualism is false.
P4: The agent that understands is the currently existing physical organism (from C1).
C2: Therefore, Cartesian dualism is false.
Now, let’s go a little deeper with a second argument against the Cartesian assumption—this one from a more metaphysical, third-person perspective.
We start with this key claim: the principle that makes the currently existing living organism a rational substance (a person) is identical to the principle that makes this currently existing living organism a living organism—i.e., living matter.
Why think that’s true?
Well, consider the difference between a living thing, like a tree, and a nonliving thing, like a rock. There has to be some principle that accounts for that difference—something that makes the tree alive rather than not. For if there were nothing to make them different, then they would be the same, which is contrary to fact.
And that principle can’t just be matter itself—because both the tree and the rock are made of matter. If matter were the explanation, they wouldn’t differ at all. Two things can’t be different in virtue of that by which they are the same.
So let’s call this life-giving principle a soul—that by which a living thing has the actuality of life rather than not.
Now, in the case of a tree (along with other plants), its act of living involves all sorts of other activities—along with their corresponding powers—characteristic of its nature, like growing, putting down roots, producing leaves, and so on.
Since the tree’s soul is the principle that accounts for it being alive, and that act of living has these other activities built into it, it follows that the tree’s soul also is the principle that accounts for these other activities—along with their corresponding powers. In other words, the tree’s soul doesn’t merely account for the tree being alive but also all its other treeish powers and operations.
The same basic idea applies to human beings.
Insofar as we’re living organisms, we must have a soul—a principle in virtue of which we’re living matter rather than nonliving matter.
And like other living organisms, humans have an act of life that contains within it a variety of other actions—and their corresponding powers. Some are had in common with plants, such as taking in nutrients and growth. The powers that enable humans to perform these actions are called vegetative powers.
Other powers are had in common with other animals—we see, hear, and taste, etc. The powers that enable humans to perform these actions are called sensitive powers.
But uniquely, we also have rational powers: intellect and will. And its these powers that enable us to think conceptually and choose freely, at least when we’ve achieved the right stages of development.
Now, here’s the key point: like with the tree, the soul that accounts for a human being’s life is the same soul that accounts for all human powers and activities—including our rational activities and their corresponding powers of intellect and will.
The reasoning goes like this:
P1: The human soul is the principle that accounts for a human’s act of life.
P2: That act of life necessarily involves other actions that go with being human (growing, sensing, and reasoning), along with the powers from which those acts proceed (vegetative, sensitive, and rational)
C: Therefore, the human soul is the principle that accounts for those actions that go with being human (growing, sensing, and reasoning), along with the powers from which those acts proceed (vegetative, sensitive, and rational).
So our initial claim is true: the principle that makes the currently existing living organism a rational substance (a person) is identical to the principle that makes this currently existing living organism a living organism—i.e., living matter.
Now let’s see how that connects to the overall question for this episode.
Science tells us that a currently existing human being was already a living organism from the moment of conception. That means his soul—the principle of life—was present from the very beginning.
And since that same soul is what grounds rationality—the rational powers and the potential to engage in rational activities at the appropriate stage of development—it follows that from the moment of conception, the currently existing human being wasn’t just alive, but a being with a rational nature—a human person.
That means Warren’s Cartesian assumption is false. A human being cannot be distinct from a human person—no matter the stage of development. And that just means a human being is a human person from the moment of conception.
So, I’ve given two arguments as to why Cartesian dualism is false:
- The agent that senses and understands is the same, and
- The ground of our rationality/personhood—the soul—is present for every human being from the moment of conception.
Now we can plug that back into our main argument against Warren’s view of a human being and the attempt to avoid the pro-life argument:
P1: If Cartesian dualism is false, then it’s impossible for a human being not to be a human person—that’s to say, a human being (at every stage of development) is a human person.
P2: Cartesian dualism is false (shown by the two arguments that we’ve made)
C: Therefore, it’s impossible for a human being not to be a human person—that’s to say, a human being (at every stage of development) is a human person.
And since it’s always immoral to kill an innocent human person, it follows that it’s always immoral to kill the unborn—no matter the stage of development.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today!
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