According to a diverse and widely popular family of moral theories, there is a class of individuals – typically humans or persons – who have the very same, full moral status. Individuals not falling into that class count for less, or not at all, morally speaking. In this article, I identify two problems for such theories, the mapping problem and the problem of misgrounded value, and argue that they are serious enough to be decisive. I will then propose an alternative (...) account of full and equal moral status that avoids those problems. In grounding full moral status in phenomenal consciousness, it preserves the idea that you and I are equal, but at the same time radically expands the community of moral equals. I conclude by discussing some practical implications of my proposal. (shrink)

En este artículo presento una clasificación de las teorías éticas acerca del aborto provocado. En esa clasificación utilizo dos criterios que, aunque inseparables, se pueden tratar relativamente disociados uno del otro. En primer lugar, presento las teorías ordenadas según el estatuto ontológico y ético que otorgan a los gametos, cigotos, preembriones, embriones, fetos y neonatos, y discuto las teorías basadas en la idea de potencialidad. En segundo lugar, me refiero a las teorías centradas en la libertad de la madre. En (...) las consideraciones finales reconozco explícitamente el partidismo de la teoría de teorías propuesta. (shrink)

The President’s Council on Bioethics has addressed the moral status of human preembryos in its reports on stem cell research and human therapeutic cloning. Although the Council has been criticized for being hand-picked to favor the right-to-life viewpoint concerning human preembryos, it has embraced the idea that the right-to-life position should be defended in secular terms. This is an important feature of the Council’s work, and it demonstrates a recognition of the need for genuine engagement between opposing sides in the (...) debate over stem cell research. To promote this engagement, the Council has stated in secular terms several arguments for the personhood of human preembryos. This essay presents and critiques those arguments, and it concludes that they are unsuccessful. If the best arguments in support of the personhood of human preembryos have been presented by the Council, then there are no reasonable secular arguments in support of that view. (shrink)

Das Potenzialitätsargument (PA) ist das wohl wichtigste Argument der Gegner der verbrauchenden Embryonenforschung und des Schwangerschaftsabbruchs. Weil schon der frühe Embryo eine potenzielle Person sei, so das Argument, besitze er bereits den moralischen Status einer Person. Mit der Möglichkeit, aus differenzierten somatischen Zellen „ethisch unproblematische“ induzierte pluripotente Stammzellen (iPS-Zellen) zu gewinnen, schien diese PA-Problematik zumindest für die Forschung umgangen. Indessen zeigen neuere wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse, dass auch aus pluripotenten Zellen neue Organismen erwachsen können. Der Beitrag argumentiert dafür, dass nach der Logik (...) von PA nicht nur iPS-Zellen, sondern auch die somatischen Zellen, aus denen diese entstehen, als potenzielle Personen mit Würde und Lebensrecht anzusehen wären. Aufgrund dieser Implikationen ist PA auch nicht als Argument für ein Lebensrecht von Embryonen geeignet. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDas Potenzialitätsargument ist das wohl wichtigste Argument der Gegner der verbrauchenden Embryonenforschung und des Schwangerschaftsabbruchs. Weil schon der frühe Embryo eine potenzielle Person sei, so das Argument, besitze er bereits den moralischen Status einer Person. Mit der Möglichkeit, aus differenzierten somatischen Zellen „ethisch unproblematische“ induzierte pluripotente Stammzellen zu gewinnen, schien diese PA-Problematik zumindest für die Forschung umgangen. Indessen zeigen neuere wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse, dass auch aus pluripotenten Zellen neue Organismen erwachsen können. Der Beitrag argumentiert dafür, dass nach der Logik von PA (...) nicht nur iPS-Zellen, sondern auch die somatischen Zellen, aus denen diese entstehen, als potenzielle Personen mit Würde und Lebensrecht anzusehen wären. Aufgrund dieser Implikationen ist PA auch nicht als Argument für ein Lebensrecht von Embryonen geeignet. (shrink)

How many individuals are present where we see a pregnant individual? Within a substance ontological framework, there are exactly two possible answers to this question. The standard answer—two individuals—is typically championed by scholars endorsing the predominant Containment View of pregnancy, according to which the foetus resides in the gestating organism like in a container. The alternative answer—one individual—has recently found support in the Parthood View, according to which the foetus is a part of the gestating organism. Here I propose a (...) third answer: a pregnant individual is neither two individuals nor one individual but something in between one and two. This is because organisms are better understood as processes than as substances. With a special focus on the Parthood View, I explain why a Process View of pregnancy, according to which a pregnant individual is a bifurcating hypercomplex process, surpasses the substance ontological approaches. (shrink)

Medical stem cell research is currently the cause of much moral controversy. Those who would confer the same moral status to embryos as we do to humans consider that harvesting such embryonic cells entails sacrificing embryos. In this paper, the author analyses critically the arguments given for such a perspective. Finally, a theory of moral status is outlined that coherently and plausibly supports the use of embryonic stem cells in therapeutic research.

Secular arguments for equal and exclusively human worth generally tend to follow one of two strategies. One, which has recently gained renewed attention because of a novel argument by S. Matthew Liao, aims to directly ground worth in an intrinsic property that all humans have in common, whereas the other concedes that there is no morally relevant intrinsic difference between all humans and all other animals, and instead appeals to the membership of all humans in a special kind. In this (...) article, I argue that both strategies necessitate drawing a line that is both arbitrary and implausibly opens a moral gulf between individuals whose difference from one another in terms of empirical reality is entirely unremarkable, providing reasons to reject them that go beyond the standard objections in the literature. I conclude that, if all humans are to be included in the community of equals, we must lay to rest the idea that we can do so without also including a wide range of non-human animals. (shrink)