Boonin's Argument Analysis

There are two leading proponents of arguments from cognitive criterion based on interest. Peter Singer and David Boonin both make a case for the moral significance of cognition and its relationship with the interest of the foetus. They are making different arguments but the thrust of their argument is similar. Peter Singer, following Jeremy Bentham takes the capacity of pleasure and pain as morally relevant. This capacity is present from the onset of sentience and consciousness. For Singer the capacity for pleasure and pain is a pre-requisite for the foetus having any interests at all. The moral difference arises between an entity with an interest and the one without. Only the interest bearing entity is a person whose interests must not be

Bonin creates an analytical distinction between dispositional and occurrent desires, and between ideal and actual desires. My desire is occurrent if I am conspicuously entertaining it, whereas it is dispositional if I have the desire but I am not conspicuously entertaining or thinking about it. Boonin’s own example can be employed to explain the four-fold system of desires. Suppose that I am thirsty and a glass of poisonous water is in front of me, without my knowing that it is poisonous. My actual occurrent desire is to quench my thirst from this glass of water in front of me. My ideal occurrent desire at that moment may be to have water from the best possible mineral source in the world. But my actual dispositional desire is not to be killed by poisonous water and my ideal dispositional desire is not to be killed or harmed by anyone or anything. What is common between foetuses, temporary comatose patients, people with depression or false belief is that they do not have occurrent desire for a valuable future. But Boonin maintains that they do have an ideal dispositional desire because they possess a particular sort of brain that makes such desires possible. With the organized cortical brain activity, the ideal dispositional desires become, not a potential but present in a foetus. A preconscious foetus does not have the moral status of the conscious foetus. Thus, for Boonin, abortion is morally justified in the case of preconscious foetus but not in the case of the conscious