ipl-logo

Michael Tooley's Response To Potentiality Argument '

781 Words4 Pages

Essay 1
My goal in this essay is to show that Michael Tooley’s response to the Potentiality Argument fails. I begin with a formulation of the Potentiality Argument. Next, I present Tooley’s response to this argument. Finally, I argue that this response fails.
The Potentiality Argument can be formulated as follows. If a being has the potential to possess qualities like that of a person, for example their psychological capabilities and access to language and thought, then they have a right to life, meaning killing it would be morally wrong. Since a fetus is expected to naturally develop such qualities, it has the potential to become a person. This means a fetus is a potential person. Since a fetus is a potential person, then it is seriously …show more content…

He formulates a hypothetical situation. This situation involves the case in which a kitten could be injected with a chemical that could turn it into a cat that possesses all the potential qualities of a person. It would be able to possess psychological capabilities like that of a human, as well as possess the ability to access thought and language. He creates this situation to then state that kittens with the ability to possess such qualities should have an equal right to life of that of Homo Sapiens. However, Tooley also develops that it is not wrong to refrain from injecting a cat with such a chemical, nor giving an already injected cat a neutralizer or killing it instead. For even if the cat has the potential to possess such qualities, it does not mean that it has a right to life before it takes on these traits of persons. Just because there is some new chance for a cat to possess person like qualities, does not mean that it has any more right to life than it previously had. This means it is not wrong to omit giving a kitten this chemical that allows it to possess human qualities. Nor does he believe it is wrong to kill a cat that has already been injected, thus keeping it from possessing such qualities. The same would follow for a fetus, as it also does not yet possess such person like qualities. Tooley argues that potentiality should not matter. Since a fetus does not have the like qualities of a person, it should be morally okay to omit or act in a manner that could prevent it from obtaining such qualities, such as abortion. This then proves that the potentiality argument is

Show More
Related
565 Words | 3 Pages

For the sake of the discussion, Thomson accepts that the fetus is a human being. However, this logic does not forbid all abortions. To illustrate her view better, she describes an interesting example involving a famous violinist. The violinist has a fatal kidney

Read More
886 Words | 4 Pages

Fetuses are not losing anything when they die. They have no hopes, aspirations, interpersonal relationships. etc. at stake. If the argument is that killing potential is wrong, then we can get nowhere.

Read More
347 Words | 2 Pages

I will argue that abortion is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed. I am then considered pro-life. To help support me I could use information from the Roe Vs. Wade Abortion court case in 1973. Abortion is an issue because you are taking an innocent fetuses life.

Read More
233 Words | 1 Pages

I agree with Ridge because it is not right for people to only focus on those children that are born. People should focus on both because it should not matter if the baby is still in the womb, it is a human already.

Read More
979 Words | 4 Pages

What makes abortion more benevolent is the fact that personhood instigates when a fetus is able to survive outside of the womb. Likewise, a fetus does not feel pain. A human is considered feasible when it is able to withstand life outside of the fetus. The case aforementioned (Roe v. Wade) states that “the term ‘person’, as worded in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

Read More
1070 Words | 5 Pages

In “A Defense of Abortion,” Judith Thomson argues with a unique approach regarding the topic of abortion. For the purpose of the argument, Thomas agrees to go against her belief and constructs an argument based on the idea that the fetus is a person at conception. She then formulates her arguments concerning that the right to life is not an absolute right. There are certain situations where abortion is morally permissible. She believes that the fetus’s right to life does not outweigh the right for the woman to control what happens to her own body.

Read More
2168 Words | 9 Pages

In Olson’s article on “Was I Ever a Fetus” he states that even scientists prove that embryos are not persons, “embryologists tell us that a human fetus that is less than about six months old cannot remember or experience anything, and has no mental capacities worthy of the name… One's psychological contents or capacities could not be continuous with those of a being with no psychological contents or capacities at all…nothing could be a fetus-or at any rate a fetus that cannot yet think-at one time and a person later on. No person was ever a fetus, and no fetus ever becomes a person”. If we say that a fetus is a human then we are saying that an acorn is already an oak tree and a seed is already a flower, although these objects have the potential to become something, they are not yet actually connected to that future object and therefore are not the future object, they are a whole different type of form. So as Olson explained in his article, since a fetus is not a person, especially because it is not aware of what is going on because it has no psychological contents, then it wouldn’t even matter if it was to be aborted, because it is not feeling anything, the only person feeling a thing is the mother, the carrier of the fetus.

Read More
794 Words | 4 Pages

Mary Anne Warren establishes a belief that a fetus’s right to live is overruled by an expecting mother’s right to an abortion because it is not a technically a true person until it is born. Warren supports her argument by saying that a nearly full-developed fetus is no more significant than a small embryo because “…it is not fully conscious… it cannot reason or communicate message… and has no self-awareness” (Warren, page 499). In contrast, our text states that “…some fetuses develop the capacity to survive outside the womb…” after nearly being two-thirds fully developed; this means that a fetus is ultimately capable of communication and awareness through it’s movements (Munson and Lague, page 469).

Read More
1520 Words | 7 Pages

Overall, he has a good point, in which makes me believe that his argument succeeds as it is morally impermissible to abort a fetus. Life is all about obtaining memories and experiencing the real thrills of what life has to offer. Marquis sums it up well when he says, “The goods of life are whatever we get out of life. The goods of life are those items toward which we take a “pro” attitude. They are completed projects of which we are proud, the pursuit of our goals, aesthetic enjoyments, friendships, intellectual pursuits, and physical pleasures of various sorts.

Read More
178 Words | 1 Pages

Although these two philosophers share a few similarities in their views, their accounts are starkly contrasting. Marquis could raise several objections to Tooley’s philosophy. In particular, he would question Tooley’s criteria for a right to life. It seems as if Tooley’s criteria essentially entails being self-autonomous and having developed into an adult to some degree- at least to the extent at which one is self aware. Marquis might argue, based on Tooley’s account, that a medical patient who is unconscious and unaware of a possible treatment is undeserving of medical attention, although that may seem contrary to the popular stance.

Read More
784 Words | 4 Pages

An example is Michael Tooley’s super-kittens case (Walsh, 2011: 476). This thought experiment is constructed with cats, which are given a drug, and from this drug they have the capability of performing human rational actions (Walsh, 2011: 476). Tooley’s assertion is postulating that if humans are worried about abortion as a foetus is a potential human, then we should be equally worried about the killing of cats

Read More
632 Words | 3 Pages

The debate whether abortion is morally permissible or not permissible is commonly discussed between the considerations of the status of a fetus and ones virtue theory. A widely recognized theory of pro-choice advocates can be thought to be that their ethical view is that fetus’s merely are not humans because they lack the right to life since they believe a fetus does not obtain any sort of mental functions or capability of feelings. Although this may be true in some cases it is not in all so explaining the wrongness of killing, between the common debates whether a fetus does or does not obtain human hood, should be illustrated in a way of a virtuous theory. The wrongness of killing is explained by what the person or fetus is deprived of, such as their right to life; not by means of a heart beat or function of one’s body, but by the fact that it takes their ability of potentially growing into a person to have the same human characteristics as we do.

Read More
967 Words | 4 Pages

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.

Read More
992 Words | 4 Pages

A second reason why abortion is wrong is because it deprives the fetus from his future. When we decide to kill a fetus then we are taking away from him a future like ours. The argument is as follows : (1) it is impermissible to kill humans, who if lived, would have a future like ours, (2) if abortion is not done, the fetus would have future as we do have, (3) so it is wrong to kill the fetus (4) therefore abortion is impermissible. A similar argument was given by Don Marquis in his article “Why Abortion is Immoral”. He stated that what makes killing wrong is neither the effect on the murder, nor the effect on the victim’s relatives or friends, but the effect is on the victim himself.

Read More
1486 Words | 6 Pages

The moral treatment for an adult and the foetus cannot be the same if the foetus is a potential adult. As already mentioned the essential property argument is not claiming that foetus is a potential person. It is an essential person with the same potentials as mature adults. Once again, this can be clarified by briefly looking at the idea of potentialities in Aristotle as a philosophical basis for the substance view of human beings. For Aristotle, as already mentioned, natural substances have an inner source of change.

Read More

More about Michael Tooley's Response To Potentiality Argument '

Related Topics

Open Document