I am looking for any information on a philosopher. She is female and her last name is Warren and has the principal of the rites of the actual person always supercedes the rites of the potential person. I need a case of when the rites of the potential person supercedes the rites of the actual person to disprove the always in her principal! Any help would be greatly appreaciated!
Thank you for your help!
Mater’s pet
You can’t exactly disprove it. From the very brief explanation you give it all depends on whether you feel the potential person has rights or not.
What follows will be technical and some of it other people here won’t agree with, but it’s a brief synopsis of some potential arguments against her stance as you explained it.
If you want a reductio ad absurdum argument against, take a women with a terminal illness who just before she is about to slip in to a coma commands that her pregnancy be aborted immediatly (stipulating she is not delirious but clear of mind and rational, this is an important stipulation). The baby can still be born without any problems and it can be passed to a good foster home. There seems to be no reason why it should be killed. It’s a little grasping at straws that one. On an intuitive level it would seem you should ignore her wishes, thus putting the potential person above the actual.
Note on this one it doesn’t really matter what stage it is in, though this is arguable, depends when you define a person coming into being, some say at a certain stage of pregnancy the foetus becomes a person, and thus it’s no longer a potential person.
Technically speaking from a science view a baby won’t become concious until about 6 months (I think it’s around that mark) when it’s mind moves from a hard wired state to a soft wired state which is capable of conciousness. However due to the way we are sentimental about these things we tend to have the mark eiher at birth (which is a bit arbitary seeing as we can induce birth) or at some point in foetaldevelopment which is no more than a line in the sand really. Until that 6 months old mark it’s still eseentially a growing collection of cells. Others would argue coception is the point of it coming into existence. However this is all a little off topic.
You see the principle itself is either something you accept or you don’t. For example if you are a certain type of Utilitarinist you certainly wouldn’t accept that principle. Imagine these circumantances.
There will be a figure in the future, King Evil, who will order the execution of thousands of babies on a whim (for example like the Bible story). I use babies as then they will all be potential people ten yesrs before the event happens.
You are from a point in time ten years before before that event mentioned in 1 happens but have used a super computer to figure the certain course of the future.(Avoids any time travel objections, you’ll just have to accept the certainty of the future I’m afraid, it’s a premise, not a conclusion).
You are able to murder King X before this happens.
Now if you accept her principle it would be wrong to murder King X. If you don’t it might actually be morally right to murder King X. Many Utilitarianists would be commited to the latter view. In a more historical context, would it be right to travel back in time to murder Hitler. Many would say it would be, even though his victims might not exist at the time you murder him (and are thus potential people). Note you can’t really use the time travel argument as, strictly speaking, to the time traveller they’re no longer potential people, but actual people. That’s why the super computer argument is a lot better.
For the observant of you out there you’ll start to see this start to touch on determinism. If things are deterministic then I would argue that potential people have as much rights as actual people, as they have to exist. But if it’s not it all becomes a little fuzzy as a potential person always has the potential to be the most evil person the world has ever known, as well as the greatest. Actually I’m not going any further into that as it’s already giving me a head ache.
To be honest it’s all about restrictions on the way we view time and the essential nature of time. Her principal can’t rest on very strong ground as it must be arbitary whether even an actual person has a future, they could die in the next moment. I don’t know anything about warren so if you gave a more specific explanation of her views, I could probably show you where her argument makes its assumption (which it must do).
google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& … ial+person
There are some links in there that seem to be linking to the person you’re talking about, Mary Anne Warren? I’ve never heard of her though I’ve done a moderate amount of moral philosophy including the cases for and against abortion.