Cheetah Cubs, Human Development, and Moral Status

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park(Where I currently work) had a new member added to the family recently: A baby cheetah. While she is small, the animal care staff at the Park have jokingly stated that she is pretty much already in charge of the facility that she is currently living in.

(source: ZOONOOZ)

When I saw her the other day, a thought had occurred to me, regarding the issue of current potential and fundamental status: Though our capacity, physical characteristics, or our inherent potentials may change, we do in fact remain the same kind of being over time(ie "the substance view of personhood"). Given that many arguments in favor of abortion attribute a potential for personhood(or, more loosely, humanity itself), I think this little cub can help us think through how to assess the moral status of a being before birth, as well as afterwards.

For example, given that the cheetah cub in question has not fully developed yet, she is currently unable to do what cheetahs are most famous for: Running at 60-70mph while engaged in the pursuit of prey. I have seen these "Cheetah Runs", and they are over in just a few seconds. Yes, it's true, this is something that is unique to a certain kind of being: cheetah beings. However, can a cheetah not possess this ability, and still be understood as a cheetah?

Chris Kaczor gives a good illustration of this concept in his book The Ethics of Abortion in which he points out that a cat that is unable to purr is still a cat, though that cat has not completely lived up to his full potential as a member of a particular species. However, that being in question is still a cat, even though "felineness" is currently unable to be fully realized at this moment.

Back to our cheetah cub, while she may not be able to run at extremely fast speeds, she has the potential to do that one day, which is rooted to the kind of thing she is, not some characteristic that may be accidentally gained or lost(such as the number of hair follicles in her fur coat). Even if she never developed the ability to run, she is still the same kind of being, but is merely lacking the current capacity to live up to her full potential. To(loosely) paraphrase Dr. Frank Beckwith, she isn't a potential cheetah, she is a cheetah with potential. It would be absurd to say that she is merely a mammal, and won't become an actual cheetah until she is able to run.

How does this relate to the debate over abortion? One of the most popular arguments heard on the street level, and articulated more formally within the academy, is that the early embryonic being or fetal being is merely a "potential" human being or person. The reasons for thinking that the being in question is merely a potential human can vary from cognitive functioning, to appearance, to the presence of bodily functions. And yet, for all these qualities that must be achieved in order to gain status as a human being, they miss an important point: Human beings the only kinds of being that can develop these attributes, and do so merely with time. If someone hands me a license to operate a type of vehicle, I have attained the status of being licensed; however, no one had to hand me a pair of eyes with which to proofread this post: I attained that attribute(reading and comprehension) over time based on the kind of being that I am, a human being. One has to be a human being first in order to develop, from within, the characteristics that human beings inherently possess.

And even if I lost many of those attributes, I am still human, though I would be tragically lacking in the things I need to realize my humanity fully. It could also be the case that a human being currently lacks the ability to realize or achieve every capacity they hold, due to age. That doesn't mean they are of a different order of things separate from human beings; it means they simply belong to the category of younger human beings. And if the capabilities that are realized due to age are not what determines the kind of being one is, it seems then that this extends all the way to when one began to exist, which is obviously in the time before birth(and according to embryology, at the moment of conception, did one gain all the capacities that had yet to be realized and matured)

It seems odd to say that our current, temporary lack of a capability is what defines whether or not we are entitled to the most basic right anyone could have: the right to exist, and to be able to recognize those full potentials that we may have. Indeed, it seems even more tragic to permanently and violently deprive someone of the goods of life whenever it suits our preferences.

Response to Joshua Stein's critique of Christopher Kaczor [Clinton Wilcox]

If you haven't yet read The Ethics of Abortion by Christopher Kaczor, you should definitely consider reading it. However, I was asked to give my thoughts on a critical review written by Joshua Stein about Kaczor's book. Ordinarily, reading over this review, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. It doesn't present any serious challenges to Kaczor's book, and he mainly complains about the methodology of the book rather than actually responding to any of Kaczor's arguments. But since I was asked, I'll respond to Stein's claims below.

I've interacted with Stein some on Facebook. From what I've gathered, he's a philosophy professor but to my knowledge, hasn't done any work in the field of philosophy, itself. Other than that I don't know much about him, but you can read his critique on Goodreads here.

The first thing I noticed is Stein's complete lack of engagement with Kaczor's book. He doesn't provide any page numbers so you can see if he's correctly understanding Kaczor's arguments, and he doesn't even seriously engage with any of them. Compare Stein's critique with one of my critical critiques on Amazon.

Stein begins his critique by stating that Kaczor's book is not "good" or "interesting", whereas his own views are based on "good" and "interesting" philosophy. Of course, this is mistaken, as while many pro-choice thinkers are careful thinkers, the philosophy that undergirds the pro-abortion-choice position is not good (and Stein doesn't begin to tell us what he means by "interesting"). The pro-abortion-choice position is grounded in ideas that are highly counterintuitive and easily refutable. If you come at the pro-choice position from a position of bodily rights, the only way this succeeds is if (as Thomson argues) parents have no natural obligations to their offspring. This is clearly absurd. If you arrive at your pro-choice views from a position of functionalism (i.e. the unborn must be able to perform some function before it is considered a person), then your argument is grounded in the same idea that led to human atrocities like the Holocaust and chattel slavery. You are grounding human value in arbitrary criteria to justify being able to kill them.

So what are the alleged problems with Kaczor's book that leads to Stein dismissing it as "not...a very good piece of professional philosophy"? He gives us four major reasons.

1) Stein's first point is Kaczor's Aristotelian assumptions. Now, Stein says that Kaczor's assumptions insert themselves in weird ways into the discussion. Then he tells us that it's perfectly fine to do this in professional philosophy, given that you acknowledge these biases. Then he tells us that Kaczor does this! So Stein's point here is really a non-argument. He's just complaining about Aristotelianism and offers no reason why we should reject it. As someone who also holds to Aristotelianism, Stein's argument from incredulity is not a serious charge against Kaczor's book.

2) Stein's next complaint is that Kaczor switches methods throughout the book. However, he gives us no examples of this. He says there's nothing incoherent in doing this, but he personally finds it annoying. So again, this is a non-argument. He's just complaining about the changing methodology in Kaczor's book while not giving us any examples to make his case. Even if Kaczor does do this, a likely reason is since Kaczor is responding to numerous pro-abortion-choice arguments from a number of different pro-choice thinkers (and not all of them philosophers), Kaczor needs different methods to respond to them because the arguments he is responding to do not all come from the same methodological procedure.

3) Next, Stein says that Kaczor's case is philosophically weak but, again, he provides no evidence of this. He simply says that Kaczor's case isn't sufficiently developed to give a rigorous criticism to. This is clearly false. In the acknowledgements, Kaczor thanks none other than Peter Singer, Jeff McMahan, Michael Tooley, and David Boonin for looking over his manuscript. In fact, Kaczor writes, "David Boonin...also deserves special recognition and gratitude. David read through the entire manuscript twice, the second time providing me with 23 single-spaced pages of comments, questions, objections, and challenges. I am especially indebted to him for this great service." (Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion, 2nd ed., Routledge, New York, NY, 2015.) (This is the first time I've ever actually quoted the acknowledgements section from a book.) Considering the caliber of pro-choice thinkers who were reviewing the manuscript and providing helpful comments, I think it much more likely that Stein either did not understand the case Kaczor made, or he did not care enough to give the book a fair read.

Stein asserts that Kaczor "basically draws the assumption that [his positive case for development at conception based on the concept of identity] is most plausible based on the failure of psychological theories of identity." This, of course, leads me to wonder if Stein actually read the book, since Kaczor has an entire chapter titled "Does Personhood Begin at Conception?" and defends what he calls the Endowment view. Kaczor writes, "The endowment account holds that each human being has inherent, moral worth simply by virtue of the kind of being it is." (See chapter six in Kaczor's book.) He then spends the rest of the chapter comparing the endowment view with the performance view of personhood (what I referred to as functionalism, above). Stein is simply being unfair to Kaczor in his critique of Kaczor's book. If his critique is that Kaczor didn't spend enough time defending the endowment view, he can certainly look elsewhere for a fuller treatment of the issue (e.g. Ed Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics or David Oderberg's Real Essentialism).

4) Finally, Stein asserts that Kaczor does not have a sufficient or proficient enough grasp on the positions of his pro-choice interlocutors to be able to comment on them. He asserts that the cases of pro-choice thinkers are not presented passably. He specifically mentions Mary Anne Warren and Peter Singer. But considering I already mentioned that Singer read Kaczor's manuscript, this objection is just silly. If Kaczor didn't understand Singer's arguments, Singer certainly would have set him straight on the arguments. Saying that Kaczor didn't have a good enough grasp on Singer's arguments when Singer reviewed the manuscript is just a lack of awareness of what he, himself, is trying to critique. Considering all the other pro-choice thinkers who also reviewed the manuscript, I think Stein is the one who needs further education on these arguments.

In fact, David Boonin, who I mentioned above, had this to say about Kaczor's book (from the back flap): "This is one of the very best book-length defenses of the claim that abortion is morally impermissible. It is clear, thorough, thoughtful and carefully argued. I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in the subject to read it and study it." David Boonin teaches ethics at University of Colorado, Boulder, and does do work in philosophy (specifically the abortion issue; Boonin's book on abortion, A Defense of Abortion, is a book I encourage anyone wanting to educate themselves on pro-choice arguments to read). Boonin would not encourage anyone to read and study this book if he did not have confidence in it. Considering the high praise Boonin has for the book, I would take his word over Stein's regarding the usefulness of it.