Personhood Argument Analysis

The personhood argument can be articulated in two popular versions: Mary Anne Warren 's version and Michael Tooley 's desire version. These two more arguments take the idea of the distinction between the descriptive concept of human being and the normative concept of the person to its extreme logical conclusion.

Warren is responsible for creating the distinction between genetic and moral humanity in the first place. Warren advances a strict psychological standard for personhood. According to Warren, a person is defined as a full-fledged member of a moral community. Thus, being biologically or genetically human is not sufficient for personhood. In Warren’s view, consciousness (the capacity to feel pain), reasoning, self-motivated activity,

Suppose, for example, that you own a car. Then I am under a prima facie obligation not to take it from you. However, the obligation is not unconditional: it depends in part upon the existence of a corresponding desire in you. If you do not care whether I take your car, then I generally do not violate your right by doing so (1973, 60).

In fact, Tooley argues for self-consciousness as the necessary criterion for personhood but in a different way. Tooley’s argument logically follows as this: If one has a concept of oneself as a continuing subject of experience, one has the desire to continue to exist. If one has the desire to continue to exist, one has the right to continue to exist. If one has the right to continue to exist, one has the right to life. However, Tooley holds, since foetuses do not have a concept of themselves as a continuing subject of experience, they do not have the right to life. Thus, abortion is not morally

The arguments from consciousness in general advance the view that at some point in the development of the foetus, it comes to actually possess a brain. Some arguments qualify this statement further by focusing on the foetus acquiring a functioning brain. Once the foetus acquires a rudimentary brain or a functioning brain, it qualifies for personhood. Hence only killing a foetus without a brain or a functioning brain is justified. These arguments on the whole try to establish a cognitive criterion for personhood. That the characteristic attribute worthy of our moral consideration is the development of consciousness. Consciousness is still a deep mystery. Science has not been able to answer what is consciousness, how it comes about and how is it related to the material brain. However, the study of brain damage has at least established that there is a relation between consciousness and brain activity. All the arguments based on the cognitive criterion for personhood take actual possession of consciousness as the morally relevant attribute of the foetus. However, they differ on how they deal with the relation of consciousness with the brain activity. On the spectrum of brain activity, the arguments based on the cognitive criterion range from considering, on the one end, simply a functioning brain with initial brain activity, all the way to the other end, where only