AI Article Synopsis
- Critics of Don Marquis's anti-abortion argument use the Identity Objection to claim that a non-sentient fetus lacks the right to life due to missing a "future like ours."
- Eric Vogelstein contends that a non-sentient fetus does have a future like ours under a psychological theory of personal identity, challenging the Identity Objection.
- Despite Vogelstein's argument, the author asserts that the quality of the fetus's future is fundamentally different from the futures of sentient beings, meaning it does not equate to having a future like ours.
Article Abstract
Some critics of Don Marquis's 'future-like-ours' anti-abortion argument launch what has been called the Identity Objection. The upshot of this objection is that under a psychological theory of personal identity, a non-sentient fetus lacks precisely what Marquis believes gives it a right to life - a future like ours. However, Eric Vogelstein, in a recent article, has argued that under this theory of personal identity a non-sentient fetus, in fact, has a future like ours, which he believes dissolves the Identity Objection. But Vogelstein is mistaken. Even if he is correct that there is a sense in which a non-sentient fetus has a future of value under a psychological theory of personal identity, the sense in which it has one is importantly different from the sense in which we have one, meaning that, under such a theory, a non-sentient fetus does not have a future like ours.
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Does the Identity Objection to the future-like-ours argument succeed?
Bioethics
February 2020
Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Eric Vogelstein has defended Don Marquis' 'future-like-ours' argument for the immorality of abortion against what is known as the Identity Objection, which contends that for a fetus to have a future like ours, it must be numerically identical to an entity like us that possesses valuable experiences some time in the future. On psychological accounts of personal identity, there is no identity relationship between the fetus and the entity with valuable experiences that it will become. Vogelstein maintains that a non-sentient fetus nonetheless has a future like ours because it is numerically identical with a future organism that has a mind that bears valuable experiences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Identity Objection to the future-like-ours argument.
Bioethics
February 2019
Department of Philosophy, Frostburg State University, Frostburg, MD, United States.
Article Synopsis
- Critics of Don Marquis's anti-abortion argument use the Identity Objection to claim that a non-sentient fetus lacks the right to life due to missing a "future like ours."
- Eric Vogelstein contends that a non-sentient fetus does have a future like ours under a psychological theory of personal identity, challenging the Identity Objection.
- Despite Vogelstein's argument, the author asserts that the quality of the fetus's future is fundamentally different from the futures of sentient beings, meaning it does not equate to having a future like ours.
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