Identity, killing, and the boundaries of our existence

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2003, Pages 413-442

  DeGrazia, David ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE; ARTICLE; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; BRAIN DEATH; DEATH; DEATH AND EUTHANASIA; ETHICS; FEMALE; FETUS; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; HOMICIDE; HUMAN; INDUCED ABORTION; INFANT; INFANTICIDE; LIVING WILL; PASSIVE EUTHANASIA; PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE; PERSONAL AUTONOMY; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT; SELF CONCEPT; SOCIOECONOMICS;

DEATH AND EUTHANASIA; GENETICS AND REPRODUCTION; PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH;

ABORTION, INDUCED; ADVANCE DIRECTIVES; BEGINNING OF HUMAN LIFE; BRAIN DEATH; DEATH; EMBRYONIC AND FETAL DEVELOPMENT; EUTHANASIA, PASSIVE; FEMALE; FETUS; HOMICIDE; HUMANS; INFANT; INFANTICIDE; MIND-BODY RELATIONS (METAPHYSICS); PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE; PERSONAL AUTONOMY; PERSONHOOD; PHILOSOPHY; PREGNANCY; SELF CONCEPT; VALUE OF LIFE;

EID: 0642312703     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2003.00413.x     Document Type: Review

References (72)

1. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984).
2. See, e.g., Eric Olson, The Human Animal (New York Oxford University Press, 1997);
3. and Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
4. DA, p. 2.
5. While these two issues may seem unrelated to identity and abortion, McMahan contends otherwise, and I generally concur (noting some qualifications in later sections). In McMahan's view, death is the mirror image of the beginning of our existence, our beginnings are important to the abortion issue, and both boundaries of human life are determined by our identity and essence. Meanwhile, progressive dementia is the mirror image of early psychological development, both boundaries of our psychological life prove important (whether or not exclusively important) to what matters in survival, which in turn illuminates abortion and the authority of advance directives in dementia cases.
6. See, e.g., H. P. Grice, "Personal Identity," Mind 50 (1941): 330-50;
7. John Perry, "Can the Self Divide?" Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972): 463-88;
8. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), ch. 1;
9. Parfit, Reasons and Persons;
10. Harold Noonan, Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 1989);
11. and Raymond Martin, Self- Concern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
12. See, e.g., Peter Unger, Identity, Consciousness, and Value (NewYork Oxford University Press, 1990);
13. and Baker, Persons and Bodies.
14. See Parfit, p. 202;
15. Baker, p. 4;
16. McMahan, p. 6;
17. and Olson, p. 24. Why the capacity for complex forms of consciousness, rather than its actual attainment at a given time? Because everyone agrees that one can be a person while unconscious so long as one retains the relevant capacity, that is, current ability (not to be confused with the potential to develop some ability). The same reasoning applies to the definition of "bare subject" below.
18. See, e.g., Nozick, pp. 78-79;
19. and Baker, pp. 5-6.
20. See, e.g., Sydney Shoemaker, "Personal Identity: A Materialist's Account," in Personal Identity, ed. Shoemaker and Richard Swinburne (Oxford: Blackwell, 19841, pp. 67-132, at pp. 108-09.
21. Naturally, the essentialist claim can be stated without using the term person.
22. John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed. (London: 1694), Bk. 11, ch. 27.
23. For an extended critique, see Olson, ch. 3 and 4;
24. see also my "Are We Essentially Persons? Olson, Baker, and a Reply," Philosophical Forum 33 (2002): 101-20.
25. I criticize both the standard view and McMahan's theory in Human Identity and Bioetkics (forthcoming: Cambridge University Press), ch. 2.
26. McMahan, p, 44.
27. Olson, p. 94.
28. McMahan, p. 66.
29. Eric Olson has made essentially the same point (personal correspondence).
30. Olson, The Human Animal.
31. EK, p. 79, emphases mine.
32. EK, Ibid, pp. 75-78.
33. The latter possibility is illustrated in the case of The Cure, p. 77.
34. Schechtman, The Constitution of Selves (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996).
35. On the topic of self-creation I have learned much from Jonathan Glover, I: The Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity (London: Penguin, 1988), part 2.
36. Thus our patterns of identification in the transplant case are misleading. Although one tends to identify with whoever receives one's cerebrum in the thought-experiment, one would not really be that person and would not have strictly egoistic reasons to care about her welfare. Thus, in this odd hypothetical case, patterns of identification diverge from both forms of identity. Admittedly, this is counterintuitive. One might even wonder why it is worthwhile to distinguish narrative from numerical identity if the former presupposes the latter and can diverge from our intuitive sense of identification. Let me mention four reasons. First, the distinction is edifying because numerical identity, which analytic philosophers emphasize, differs from the more everyday narrative sense of "identity," which is closely connected with what matters in survival.
37. Second, the two senses of "identity" are relevant to different issues in bioethics, a thesis I develop in Human Identity and Bioetkics. Third, in the world as we know it (where cerebrum transplants do not occur), patterns of identification track narrative identity very reliably, more reliably than they track numerical identity since some people do not identify with future stages of themselves in which they are permanently comatose, for example. Indeed, the transplant intuition may simply be an overgeneralization from what is ordinarily true: that patterns of identification track narrative identity, which entails-in presupposing-numerical identity. Fourth, as we will see, an understanding of narrative identity and the closely related phenomenon of self-creation will enable us to improve upon McMahan's account of what matters; considerations of numerical identity alone would be insufficient for this purpose
38. People's intuitions clash over whether numerical identity or mere survival is a sufficient basis for any degree of egoistic concern. For a strong defense of the thesis that we should respect people's differing intuitions, and ask what does matter to people rather than what should matter to them, see Martin, ch. 1.
39. The most influential version of this argument appears in Donald Marquis, "Why Abortion is Immoral," Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989):183-202.
40. Boonin, pp. 49-56, 283.
41. Boonin switches from the language of vuluings to that of desires because Marquis, whose version of the valuable futures argument he addresses, treats the terms as interchangeable, and because Boonin finds the language of desires more natural for the argument he develops (p. 63).
42. See, e.g., T. M. Scanlon, "Preference and Urgency," Journal of Philosophy 72 (1975): 655-69;
43. L. W. Sumner, Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), ch. 5, 6;
44. and Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ch. 2.
45. By contrast, harm-based accounts of the wrongness of killing imply, for example, that killing old people is less prima facie wrong than killing young people, who generally have more to lose from death.
46. McMahan, pp. 240-46.
47. Unlike some theorists (see, e g , Mary Anne Warren, "Human and Animal Rights Compared," in Environmental Philosophy, ed. Robert Elliot and Arran Gare [University Park Penn State University Press, 1983], pp. 11o-25), Boonin uses the term "right" such that if A and B both have rights to X, these rights are equal in strength.
48. Thomson, 'A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47-66.
49. Boonin notes that, among other defenses of this line of argument, E M. Kamm's treatment in Creation and Abortion (New York Oxford University Press, 1992)
50. which he cites repeatedly, is especially important (DA, p. 134).
51. McMahan, p. 398.
52. His supporting argument, which explores the Dependent Child case (pp. 392-981, is a response to the GSA in general, not to Boonin's handling of the responsibility objection.
53. Cf. McMahan, p. 366.
54. McMahan argues in several ways that his approach accommodates our sense that infanticide is generally worse than abortion. See pp. 338-45.
55. Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Death, 'A Definition of Irreversible Coma," Journal of the American Medical Association 205 (1968): 337-40;
56. U.S. President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Defining Death (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1981).
57. See, e.g., Lawrence Becker, "Human Being: The Boundaries of the Concept," Philosophy & Public Affairs 4 (1975): 334-59, at p. 353;
58. Charles Culver and Bernard Gert, Philosophy in Medicine (New York Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 181;
59. and President's Commission, pp. 31-43.
60. Human persons are specified because this argument concerns beings, like us, who are at some time persons or at least conscious beings. Some who reason along these lines acknowledge that after one of us dies a human organism may continue to live, and that an encephalic infants, which are never conscious, are born alive. See, eg., Michael Green and Daniel Wikler, "Brain Death and Personal Identity," Philosophy & Public Affairs g (1980): 105-33, at p. 128.
61. See, e.g., Edward Bartlett and Stuart Youngner, "Human Death and the Destruction of the Neocortex," in Death, ed. Richard Zaner (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, 1988), pp. 199-215, at pp. 210-11;
62. Roland Puccetti, "Does Anyone Survive Neocortical Death?" in Zaner, pp. 75-90, at pp. 84-85,87;
63. H. Tristam Engelhardt, The Foundations of Bioethics, 2nd ed. (New York Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 241-50;
64. and Ben Rich, "Postmodern Personhood," Bioethics II (1997): 206-16, at p. 212.
65. See, e.g., Bartlett and Youngner;
66. Robert Veatch, "The Impending Collapse of the Whole-Brain-Oriented Definition of Death," Hustings Center Report 23 (July-August 1993): 18-24;
67. and D. Alan Shewmon, "The Brain and Somatic Integration: Insights into the Standard Biological Rationale for Equating 'Brain Death with Death," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 26 (2001): 457-78.
68. See Shewmon, pp. 472-73.
69. He defends the permissibility of voluntary euthanasia later (EK, pp. 455-85).
70. See, e.g., Allen Buchanan and Dan Brock, Deciding for Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 162-66. In discussing cases like Ann's, the authors refer repeatedly to the demented nonperson as a " successor" to the agent of the directive, an agent who "no longer exists."
71. See my "Advance Directives, Dementia, and 'the Someone Else Problem'," Bioethics 13 (1999): 373-91.
72. McMahan, pp. 497-503. Its merits include a probing discussion of Ronald Dworkin's influential approach to the authority of advance directives in dementia cases.