Capacities, Potentialities, and Rights

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Rights-ethicists intensely debate what properties of an individual are necessary and sufficient in order for that individual to have moral rights. At the heart of this important debate is the issue of whether individuals such as human foetuses, infants, and unconscious adults have moral rights, and if so, what these rights are. This paper focuses on the moral status of unconscious adults, as well as human foetuses, which are potential agents in the sense that they follow a “normal” path of development towards agency. Using Michael Tooley’s (Tooley 1983) and Jeff McMahan’s (McMahan 2002) influential discussions on this topic as a point of departure, this paper defends two claims. (1) Possession of the capacity for autonomous agency that is temporarily “blocked” by sleep or coma is sufficient in order for an individual to have intrinsic worth and thus, moral rights. (2) If possession of the blocked capacity for autonomous agency is sufficient in order for an individual to have intrinsic worth that gives her moral rights, then the presence of potential for autonomous agency is sufficient for an individual to have intrinsic worth that gives her moral rights. I do not address the issue of rights conflicts. The argument is structured as follows. In Section 2, I will clarify the terms “Blocked Capacity” and “Potentiality”. In Section 3, I will criticize arguments for the claim that the presence of the blocked capacity for agency is insufficient for having moral rights. In Section 4, I will present positive arguments to the effect that possessing the blocked capacity for agency is sufficient for having moral rights. In Section 5, I will present arguments to the effect that the blocked capacity for agency and potentiality are similar in morally relevant aspects. I will also argue that some differences may even support the claim that potentiality, in some cases, merits more extensive protection than the blocked capacity. This may be so in cases where the potential agent undergoes certain changes, while the temporarily unconscious adult does not. In Section 6, I will very briefly discuss the relevance of the arguments developed in this paper for the pioneering Human Brain Project, aiming at the creation of a virtual human brain to be utilized for medical research. Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2014) 17:653–665 DOI 10.1007/s10677-013-9463-y