The Right to Life Argument - Critque Follow Up

In the comments section of my last post, Phil from Plumb Bob’s Blog offered a thoughtful response to my critique of the right to life argument. Below is my response.

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Thanks for your comments Phil. Sorry for the delay in responding. The practice of law is demanding at times.

You first argue that an account of where rights come from is critical to any analysis of a right's importance. However, the claim that our rights come from God contributes little, if anything, to our understanding of what a right is or how important it is. Everything, after all, comes from God, but that fact doesn’t help us understand a thing’s nature or power. God sends the rain to the just and the unjust, but this fact does not help us understand rain.

You correctly state that American political theory (and our basic constitutional structure) was historically predicated on a theory of natural rights - via John Locke. Locke understood “natural” rights to be rights that individuals possess prior to forming or entering into a society. Locke believed that certain rights, e.g., the right to accumulate property, the right to self defense, the right to adjudicate one’s own disputes, etc., inhered in individuals independent of any social order, and their inherence was self evident. According to Locke, one needed only to understand the nature of these rights to see that individuals possessed them. For this reason, Locke’s contribution to rights theory was limited to positing natural rights. (Of course, most of the ideas informing our constitutional order were his, so I don’t mean to denigrate Locke in the least).

My own view is that rights are a function of status and contextual value. However, because it would take lots of space to describe my theory of rights, and even more space to defend it, I’ll leave that for another post. Suffice it to say that I concede the supreme moral significance of the right to life, and further concede that this right is possessed by all human “someones.” That should keep us from hurling competing sound bites at each other.

You also argue that my “no mental life/no someone/no rights bearer” argument could be used to deny people the status of “someonehood” based on the lack of some particular mental processing or ability. This misunderstands my argument. I’m not arguing that individuals that possess mental processes must possess particular mental capacities to qualify as rights bearers (as the historical mass murders argued). I’m arguing that an entity possessing no mental processes whatsoever cannot be a rights bearer.

In a nutshell, I’m arguing that the minimum requirement for being a rights bearer is being a “subject.” Being a subject is the opposite of being an object. We call a subject a “someone,” and call an object a “something.” The difference between a subject and an object is the presence of mental life - or consciousness.

Ordinary (living) human beings are both subjects and objects - minds and bodies. Corpses are objects. Ghosts and angels are pure subjects. You get the idea.

Grass and trees are alive. But grass and trees are clearly objects because they lack mental life - they lack consciousness. This is why grass and trees cannot possess rights. Nor can rocks or buildings or canyons. Similarly, individual human beings in which there are no mental processes (such as embryos stored in a freezer) are objects, not subjects. They may be sacred objects, but they are objects nonetheless. They possess no mental activity at all. And because they are objects, they are not rights bearers and the right to life argument does not protect them.

That is the argument I am making.

I understand the desire to equate “someonehood” with “human life.” And I freely admit that in most cases of ordinary experience, the two categories are co-extensive. In most instances of human life, a “someone” is present.

I also concede that being alive is a necessary condition of being a someone (ghosts and zombies excluded).

However, being alive is not a sufficient condition for being a someone (see grass and trees). More importantly, the concepts “subject” and “someone” are logically unrelated to the concept of “human” The concepts are experintially related because most living human beings are someones. But being “human,” or even a “living human,” is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for being a subject. Higher order animals have consciousness and are, thus, subjects. Embryos are living human beings, but they are not subjects.

And again, because being a subject - a someone - is a minimal qualification for being a rights bearer, an entity must be more than a “human life” to be a rights bearer.

If this is wrong, someone should let me know why?

You argued that using “thought” as a criterion for acknowledging the existence of a “someone” is problematic, because “there is no point in the development of 'someonehood' that is not completely arbitrary." I understand “arbitrary” to mean “a determination that is not based on reason, evidence, or any applicable criteria.”

On this understanding of “arbitrary,” there is nothing philosophically arbitrary about positing the presence of thought or consciousness as the point at which a “someone” appears. This follows from the arguments I have just made.

Nor is positing the presence of thought or consciousness as the point at which a “someone” appears scientifically arbitrary. The existence of brain function is measurable. The fact that there remains disagreement about precisely when consciousness emerges in fetal development does not render the criterion arbitrary. It merely makes it difficult to apply. But that yields, at best, an argument for our being generous in extending right to life based legal protections.

Best wishes,

Joe H.

UPDATE:

It occured to me some of you might think my argument implies that all subjects (including dogs, cows, and the like) have rights. This is wrong. The key premise of my critique of the right to life argument is not "all subjects have rights." It is that "all rights bearers are subjects." That premise is logically equivalent to "if you're not a subject, you're not a rights bearer."