In a recent paper, Lee Kerckhove and Sara Waller (hereafter K & W) argue that the concept of personhood is irrelevant for the abortion debate.1 Surprisingly, this irrelevance is due merely to the fact that the predicate ‘being a person’ — hereafter ‘personhood’ — is inherently vague. This vagueness, they argue, reduces ‘personhood’ to incoherency and disqualifies the notion from being a useful moral concept. In other words, if ‘personhood’ isn’t a precise notion with well-defined boundaries, then it cannot be (...) of any use in the debate over the permissibility of abortion. This argument is mistaken. While it may be true that ‘personhood’ is irrelevant for the debate over abortion (a substantive issue not dealt with in this paper), it is not true that ‘personhood’ should be disqualified merely because it is vague. Section 2 of the paper is a quick survey in which I briefly review the importance of ‘personhood’ in some of the more recent literature concerning the moral status of abortion. Section 3 is a reconstruction of K & W’s argument against the relevancy of ‘personhood’ and a criticism showing why their argument fails. Section 4 approaches the use of a vague predicate in moral debate and explores the application of ‘personhood’ given three contemporary solutions to vagueness: degree theory, epistemicism and supervaluationism. (shrink)

Don Marquis has argued that abortion is immoral because it deprives the fetus of a "future like ours." But Marquis's argument fails by incorrectly assuming that a zygote and the late-term fetus with which it is physically continuous are numerically identical. In fact, the identity of a prebirth human (PBH) across gestation is indeterminate, such that it is determinately morally permissible to destroy an early-term PBH and determinately immoral to destroy a late-term PBH. Beginning at some indeterminate point during gestation (...) and ending at some indeterminate point later in gestation, destroying a PBH is neither determinately morally permissible nor determinately immoral. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is an analysis of the Continuity Argument, one of the most influential arguments upon which the moral condemnation of scientific and medical practices such as embryo research and experimentation, assisted reproduction, abortion, therapeutic cloning, etc. are based. I have firstly given a very brief account of the approach that attributes the status of marker event to fertilization, identifying the Continuity Argument between other argumentation. Further, I have tried to distinguish the three possible interpretations of (...) the notion of continuity assumed in the Continuity Argument, and to isolate the most persuasive formulation of Continuity Argument. Finally, I argue that even from the most convincing philosophical and scientific interpretation of the post-fertilization continuity, it does not follow: that fertilization is a necessary determinant of moral status; that fertilization is the most reasonable determinant of moral status. In short, this article has two goals: to show that this very argument does not entail the stance that the above mentioned practices are morally impermissible; to suggest that some pragmatic strategies which treat sorites-infected paradoxes could insure a philosophically and scientifically appropriate framework for an alternative approach. (shrink)

Glavna je svrha ovoga članka analizati Argument kontinuiteta, jedan od najutjecajnijih argumenata na kojemu su utemeljeni moralna osuda znanstvenih i medicinskih praksi poput istraživanja i eksperimenata s embrijem, potpomognuta reprodukcije, pobačaja, terapeutskog kloniranja, itd. Prvo se daje vrlo kratko objašnjenje pristupa koji pripisuje status markirajućeg događaja fertilizaciji, identificirajući Argument kontinuiteta među drugim argumentacijama. Nadalje, pokušava se razdvojiti tri moguće interpretacije pojma kontinuiteta pretpostavljenog u Argumentu kontinuiteta, te izdvojiti najuvjerljiviju filozofsku i znanstvenu interpretaciju postfertilizacijskog kontinuiteta. Naposljetku, tvrdim da iz filozofski i (...) znanstveno najprihvatljivije interpretacije ne slijedi: 1) da je fertilizacija nužna odrednica moralnog statusa; 2) da je fertilizacija najrazboritija odrednica moralnog statusa. Ukratko, ovaj članak ima dva cilja: I) pokazati da upravo taj argument ne povlači za sobom stajalište da su gore spomenute prakse moralno nedopustive; II) sugerirati da bi neke pragmatičke strategije koje se bave soritom-prouzročenim paradoksima mogle osigurati filozofijski i znanstveno primjeren okvir za alternativni pristup. (shrink)