Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to offer support for the substance view of persons, the philosophical anthropology defended by Patrick Lee in his essay. In order to accomplish this the author presents a brief definition of the substance view; argues that the substance view has more explanatory power in accounting for why we believe that human persons are intrinsically valuable even when they are not functioning as such, why human persons remain identical to themselves over time, and why it follows from these points that the unborn are human persons; and responds to two arguments that attempt to establish the claim that the early human being is not a unified substance until at least fourteen days after conception.