Loss of a F uture L ike O urs: The FLO Argument

1. Loss of a Future Like Ours:The FLO Argument • Marquis argues that the wrongness of killing beings like us consists in the loss of all the experiences, activities, projects and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future and make it worth-living.

2. Application to the Abortion Argument • Marquis hasn’t said what sort of future a being must have for it to be s a serious wrong to have that being to lose its future. • He doesn’t think he has to solve this problem in order to apply his theory to the abortion question. • He argues (in his original paper) that “the loss of the future to a standard fetus, if killed, is . . . at least as great a loss as the loss of the future to a standard adult human being who is killed.” • Thus, he argues that if the killing of a “standard adult human being” is a serious moral wrong for the reasons Marquis identifies, the killing of a standard fetus in an abortion is a serious moral wrong, too.

3. Marquis’ Replies to Some (not all) Objections • Objections: • Potentiality Objection • Argument from Interests • Contraception Objection

4. Potentiality Objection (210) • The FLO argument basically says that the fetus has the potential for certain future states and, in virtue of this potential, has a right to life. • But potential for a certain status does not give a thing that status. • (This is the common complaint about the justification of the potentiality criterion of moral personhood.)

5. Potentiality Objection • Marquis’s Reply (210): • The FLO argument doesn’t use potentiality to “shoehorn” fetuses into the status that normal adults have. • Instead, it is the potential of all humans (whether adults, children, infants or fetuses) to have a future of value that explains why it is significantly wrong to kill them.

6. Argument from Interests (210) • Sentience (the capacity to feel and have experiences) is a necessary condition for having any interests at all. • The early stage fetus is not sentient. (Sentience begins about 22 weeks into the pregnancy.) ——————— • Therefore, early stage fetuses cannot have interests and, in particular, cannot have an interest in experiencing a future like ours.

7. Argument from Interests • Marquis’s Reply (210-1): • Sentience is not a requirement for having interests. • Temporarily unconscious people have interests even though they are not sentient.

8. Argument from Interests • Response to Marquis • No one believes that moral interests blink in and out of existence with the current sentience of the being who has them. • The temporarily nonsentient person is still a sentient being in the dispositional sense. • This person has been sentient in the occurrent sense and will be again. • Interests survive these gaps in occurrent sentience. • What the critic is saying is that sentience must be there first for the being to have any interests at all. • Marquis has not refuted this claim.

9. The Contraception Objection (211) • Marquis’s argument “proves too much.” • If it works to show that the fetus has a future like ours, it also shows that the unfertilized egg and the sperm have a future like ours. • If so, then not only is abortion morally wrong but so is the use of contraception and the failure to bring about conception when one can. • But since these things are not wrong, Marquis’s argument is must be flawed.

10. The Contraception Objection (211) • Marquis’s Reply: • The FLO argument turns, Marquis says, on whether there is an individual who can lose a future like ours. • Because, prior to conception (or even perhaps during the first fourteen days after conception – see p.204), there is no determinate individual that will, without interference, have a future like ours, the argument cannot be extended to egg cells or sperm cells.

11. The Contraception Objection • Marquis’s Argument: A. Prior to conception, there is no non-arbitrary determinate subject of harm. B. If there is no non-arbitrary determinate subject of harm, then no determinate thing was harmed. C. If no determinate thing was harmed, then no wrong has been done. ———————————- • Thus, the FLO account of the wrongness of abortion does not entail that contraception is wrong.

12. The Contraception Objection • The criticism of Marquis’s Argument against the Conception Objection: “It proves too much, once again.” • The Booby-Trapped Asteroid Cave Suppose that I explore a cave on distant asteroid and decide to plant a booby-trap to kill the next visitor to the cave. I know that no one living now—or even conceived yet—will be the next visitor. Because it takes so long for a spaceship to make it to the asteroid, it will be at least a hundred years before anyone else can visit the cave. But, sometime in the future, someone will visit the cave and that person will be killed by my booby-trap. • On Marquis’s account, accepting premises A. through C., we must conclude that my action does not harm a determinate thing and, so, no wrong has been done.

13. Continued: 2. The Pre-poisoned Fetus • Suppose there is a recreational drug that causes some mild enjoyment but has disastrous consequences if it is ingested by a mother within a day prior to conceiving a fetus. It will alter the chemistry of the uterus so that any fetus conceived will have severe physical and mental defects. • Notice, though, that prior to conception, there is no non-arbitrary determinate subject of harm. • Thus, by Marquis’s reasoning, there is nothing wrong with taking the drug for a few minutes of pleasure even if you know you will conceive a child during the critical period. Your action harms no determinate thing and, so, no wrong has been done. • Marquis’ argument ‘proves’ that we can’t harm and wrong future generations. He should respond to the objection in another way. • But let me note some defenders of Marquis admit contraception is wrong. Thus, for their point of view at least, the contraception objection does not have any bite even if it turns out to be correct.

14. Other Possible and Actual Criticisms of Marquis’s Argument that Abortion is Wrong • Sinnott-Armstrong’s Objection • The Space-Explorer/Potentially Intelligent Cow example • Structural Features of Marquis’s Argument

15. Sinnott-Armstrong’s Objection • Sinnott-Armstrong points out that it is not always morally wrong to have a being lose its future like ours. • This seems clear in certain cases of self- or other- defense. • Sinnott-Armstrong also argues that in the following case, Beth’s having Adam lose his future like our is not wrong. • “For example, suppose Adam will die without a certain medicine. Beth has a milder case of the disease, so she needs the same medicine only to prevent her from being sick for nine months, from some risks of complications, and from longer-term adverse effects on career, feelings etc. However, Beth owns the only dose of medicine. She obtained it fairly and did not promise it to anyone. If Adam asks Beth to give him her medicine, would it be morally wrong for Beth to refuse?” (65) • Or suppose Beth’s medicine container is blown off to Adam’s feet, and Adam picks it up. Is it wrong for Beth to take it from Adam or get the police to take it?

16. Continued • Sinnott-Armstrong’s point is that even if the deprivation of a future like ours is part of the reason why most cases of killing normal adult human beings are wrong, it is not the sufficient condition. • Thus, that abortion is having a fetus lose a future like ours is not sufficient to show abortion is morally wrong. • To show that abortion is wrong, Marquis needs to show that abortion satisfies whatever additional condition makes the loss of a future like ours unjustified.

17. The Space Explorer and the Potentially Intelligent Cow • In Warren’s space explorer example, the cultured cells have a future like ours. • Then, it is immoral to have these cells lose a future like ours. • The same goes to the potentially intelligent cow example.

18. Structural Features of Marquis’s Argument • Because Marquis’s argument for FLO is an “inference to the best explanation” it is always subject to the objection that a better explanation for the wrongness of killing can be found. • The argument does, though, put the burden on his opponent to find that better explanation. • We will see alternative explanations below. First, let’s see why many people take self-awareness and evaluating capacity as (part of) C for the status to have a moral right to life.

19. Tooley’s Explanation of the Wrongness of Killing a Normal Adult Human Being (299-300 of the text) • According to Michael Tooley, killing a normal adult human being is wrong because he or she has a right to life; but he admits that this explanation is not deep: it does not explain why he or she has a right to life, and why (the right to) life is that important. • Tooley’s answer to these questions is as follows: because he or she has interest in the continuation of his or her life. • Behind this answer is the following general account of the relation between moral rights and interests: one’s moral rights to something (his or her body, liberty, properties etc.) exist to protect her or her corresponding interests in them.

20. Tooley on the Relation between Self-Awareness, Evaluating Capacity & the Moral Right to Life • Tooley holds that a being can have interest in the continuation of his or her life only if it passes the following two conditions. (1) The being is self-aware: that is, aware of itself as an entity, distinct from other entities in the world, existing over a period of time from a past to a (possible) future. (2) The being has the capacity to desire (or value) the continuation of the self-conscious self. • For the similar reason, many people take self-awareness and evaluating capacity as (part of) C for moral personhood (i.e., the status to have moral rights, e.g., right to life).

21. A Comparison with FLO Account • An advantage of this account over future like ours account is that it eliminates an apparent arbitrariness of privileging our life over other lives, e.g., lives of possible intelligent aliens, angels or deities. • On this account, as far as these other creatures have interest in the continuation of their lives, it is wrong to kill them. It is not clear whether FLO account guarantees this conclusion if their lives are very different from ours. • Young biological humans – fetuses and neonates – have futures like ours. On FLO account, their lives should be protected as ours. On the present account, this might not be true because they do not have self-awareness and evaluating capacity (though they usually have the potential). • If we take self-awareness and evaluating capacity as (part of) C for moral personhood, and hold the actual possession criterion, fetuses and neonates will not have moral rights to life. (See Feinberg, 209-210, again.)

22. Kantian Account • Second, consider the Kantian account of a moral right to life and the wrongness of killing a person. • A person has a right to life and killing is wrong because of the person’s rational autonomy. • The actual (or perhaps even potential) possession of rational autonomy is what makes a being have moral rights.