Christian Research Journal Reads Episode 142: The Human Embryo: Potential Person or Person with Great Potential?

This is Episode 142 of Christian Research Journal Reads. This is an audio version of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL article, “The Human Embryo: Potential Person or Person with Great Potential?” by Clinton Wilcox. This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 40, number 3 (2017). https://www.equip.org/articles/the-human-embryo-potential-person-or-person-with-great-potential/ 

 It was accompanied by Postmodern Realities podcast Episode 044: The Human Embryo: Potential Person or Person with Great Potential?


This podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles. As the flagship publication of the Christian Research Institute, the Journal seeks to equip followers of Christ to think and to live Christianly—to exercise truth and experience life. Truth, especially essential Christian doctrine, forms the basis for how we live our lives in Christ. As the apostle Paul instructed Timothy in 1 Tim. 4:16, “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”The Christian Research Journal enjoyed a print incarnation of almost 45 years. Now exclusively an online publication, the Journal consists of thousands of free articles. We hope that through these audio articles you are not only equipped to proclaim and defend your faith but that as a disciple you also draw closer to Christ in your walk with Him.  You can find the written version of each article that is an episode of Christian Research Journal Reads at the website of the Christian Research Institute, equip.org. All Christian Research Journal articles at equip.org are completely free and do not require a subscription and are not under a paywall.All episodes will be available at the following podcast platforms with more being added daily! You can help spread the word about this new podcast by giving us a rating and review from the other channels we are listed on and telling others!You can view off our Website at the at this link and off our Journal main page. 



Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/christian-research-journal-reads--6022978/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
This is episode one hundred and forty two of the
Christian Research Journal Reads Podcast. The Human Embryo Potential person
or Person with Great Potential by Clinton Wilcox. This article
first appeared in the print edition of the Christian Research Journal,
Volume forty, number three in twenty seventeen. The Christian Research

(00:31):
Journal Reads Podcast presents audio versions of Christian Research Journal articles.
To read the full text of this article and its documentation,
please go to equip dot org. That's e qu ip
dot org.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
The Human embryo Potential person or Person with Great Potential
by Clinton Wilcox, read by Christina Winterstellar. People use the
word quote potential unquote in many different ways. A child
can show potential when it comes to having sports or

(01:09):
musical aptitude. If a speaker gives a presentation without being
adequately prepared, there is the potential for disaster. However, in philosophy,
potential is a technical term and it is not as
simple as one might expect. An oak sapling has the
potential to become a mature oak tree, and it has

(01:31):
the potential to become a house. But each of these
senses of the word potential is different and has real
world application to debates in bioethics, Some pro choice advocates
try to argue that human embryos are not persons, but
are quote potential unquote persons. In this view, embryos are

(01:52):
biological members of the human species, but they have not
yet reached the developmental milestone necessary for ground their identity
as persons. However, calling the human embryo a quote potential
unquote person is misguided. A common idea is that living
things are constructed piece by piece from the outside, when

(02:14):
in fact they develop from within themselves. To say that
a human embryo is a potential person is misguided because
it fails to take into account the fact that the
reason the embryo eventually will become an adult is because
she is a human being with a human nature, and
it is this nature that directs her development as a

(02:36):
human being. As she has a rational, volitional nature, she
will develop all of the present capacities to perform personal activities.
Human embryos are not potential persons, they are actual persons
with potential. Attempting to mitigate their natural compunction about human

(02:56):
embryo experimentation and abortion, pro choice advocates often contend that
human embryos and fetuses are not persons, but are quote
potential unquote persons. Although embryos are biological members of the
human species, they say embryos have not yet reached the
developmental milestone necessary for grounding their identity as persons. This

(03:21):
idea is misguided. However, in order to demonstrate the personhood
of an embryo, it is necessary to grasp several scientifically
informed and philosophically rich concepts, the notions of nature, capacity, substance,
and potentiality. These concepts can be difficult to grasp, but

(03:42):
through perseverance they can be understood. Mastery of these concepts
is very important because understanding them will equip you to
recognize why the more sophisticated arguments for abortion fail. Natures
and capacities for purposes of this are article. It is
sufficient to say that a thing's nature determines the kind

(04:04):
of thing it is and orders its ultimate capacities, so
it can flourish according to its kind. To determine what
kind of things something is requires observation and experience. We
know from observation that dogs bark, so it can be
said that in the nature of canines is the capacity
to bark, a capacity can be defined as the metaphysical

(04:27):
ground of a thing, such that a dog has the
capacity to bark just because it is the sort of
thing that barks. Humans, too, have a nature an observation
and experience show that, in virtue of their nature, they
have the capacity for rational thought. A human being just
is the sort of thing that can think rationally. Philosophers

(04:50):
commonly speak of capacities in terms of powers or dispositions,
So to say that something with a human nature has
the capacity for speech is just to say that humans
have the ability and propensity to exhibit speech. If functioning
as humans should, then each person will speak. If a
human fails to develop the ability for speech, she does

(05:12):
not cease being human, since she is human in virtue
of her nature, but her capacity for speech is blocked.
Capacities exist in hierarchies. I currently have the first order
capacity present capacity to speak English. When I was an embryo,
I did not. The capacity to speak English was a

(05:33):
second order capacity until I was able to learn and
reproduce the words understanding what I was speaking. Then it
became a first order capacity. I also currently have the
second order capacity to speak Italian, which will not become
a first order capacity unless I learn the language. Moreover,
philosopher JP Morland explains, quote, there are first order capacities,

(05:59):
second order capacity cities to have these first order capacities,
and so on. Until ultimate capacities are reached. A higher
order capacity is realized by the development of lower order capacities.
Under it, my first order ability to speak English relies
on lower order capacities, including developing my lower capacity to

(06:21):
have a larynx, mouth, and tongue. As my lower order
capacities develop, I fulfill my ultimate capacities and in principle,
flourish according to my human nature. How an entity acquires
these capacities is determined by the kind of thing it
is its nature. We know from science that living organisms

(06:42):
such as horses and humans, begin life at fertilization, and
each entity's capacities develop within and by the organism itself.
Living things have their capacities inherently at the second order level.
Humans then exhibit rational thought, languages, create art, love one another,
and so on, because by nature they possess these inherent

(07:06):
second order capacities from conception. However, non living artifacts such
as cellos and computers must first be constructed before they
possess any of the capacities had by other things like
them artifacts versus substances. Confusion in the abortion issue stems

(07:26):
from seeing unborn humans as less like living things that
naturally develop and more like cars that are constructed on
an assembly line. It is crucial, then, to understand the
differences between artifacts and what philosophers call substances. An artifact,
such as a car, is an artificially constructed thing and

(07:47):
has no inherent capacities, but gains capacities at its construction
from outside itself. A substance is an entity that maintains
its identity through change. Artifacts do not maintain their identity
through change, but all living things do. All living things
are substances. To better apprehend these abstract ideas, consider levels

(08:09):
of organization in nature. Heap. A heap is the weakest
kind of unity. A pile of scrap metal is a heap.
A heap has unity only insofar as each item in
the heap is spatially located near each other. Artifact. An
artifact is a stronger kind of unity than a heap,

(08:29):
but weaker than a substance. Its parts are not merely
spatially close together, but it has a mechanical unity in
the way its parts work together according to how its
designer designed it. Among the many differences between artifacts and substances,
two are crucial for this discussion. The first difference to
consider is that an artifact's individual parts not only exist

(08:53):
before its construction, but also have metaphysical priority over the artifact.
A car is not able to trans support someone until
all the parts are in place. A car does not
have this capacity inherently because it is constructed by an
outside builder from a heap a pile of metal. That
pile of metal would not become a car on its own.

(09:15):
That metal could become anything such as a boat, a house,
or Christmas ornaments. Also, the parts are what determine what
the car does. The second difference to consider is that
if one exchanges a part on an artifact, the artifact
is not, strictly speaking, the same entity it was before.
This is why cars lose their value to collectors if

(09:36):
any part of the car has been changed, even if
just the hood ornament substance. A substance is the strongest
kind of unity. It has an internal unity that directs
its own development, and thus living organisms constitute paradigm cases
of substances as such, unlike artifacts, it is the substance's

(09:57):
nature that determines its parts. And whereas an artifact derives
its unity from its parts, a substance derives its unity
from its internal nature. This is why a human embryo
is a human being. Once it comes into existence at fertilization,
it is biologically human, and it has a human nature.
And again, unlike artifacts, a substance maintains its identity through

(10:22):
any changes it undergoes that do not kill the substance.
If I lose my arm in an accident, I am
still quote me unquote, despite losing one of my parts.
Kinds of potential. This leads finally to a discussion of potentiality.
There are different kinds of potential. An oak tree sapling

(10:43):
has the potential to become a mature oak tree, but
it also has the potential to become a house. A
pile of scrap metal has the potential to become a car,
but it also has the potential to become a boat.
As an embryo, I had the potential to speak English,
but I also had the potential to speak Italian. Only
one of those potentialities thus far having been actualized, active

(11:08):
and passive potential. Aristotle, in his book Metaphysics, made a
distinction between active and passive potentials. An active potential's locus
is in the agent itself. For example, where heat or
the art of building are present, the active potential to
produce heat is present in the thing that can produce heat,

(11:30):
and the active potential to build is present in the
man who can build. A passive potential is a potential
that is in the thing acted upon. For example, whatever
is oily can be burned, and whatever yields in a
particular way can be crushed. Philosopher Russell D. Silvestro puts
it this way quote. Active capacities are powers to change things,

(11:56):
whether in the world or in the bearer of the capacity,
while massive capacities are powers for being changed by things
in the world or in the bearer of the capacity.
So consider a tree sapling. An oak tree sapling has
the active potential to become a mature oak tree. This
is because it has the potential within itself to develop

(12:18):
into a mature oak tree, and such developmental changes preserve
its identity as an oak tree. However, that tree sapling
also has the potential to become a house it has
this potential passively, because it must be acted on from
outside itself in order to become a house, and being
so acted on, its identity as an oak tree is

(12:40):
no longer preserved. We say that an active potential is
an identity preserving potential because it is within the substances
internal programming to undergo that change, but also because there
is a further distinction to be made. This further distinction
concerns various meanings of the word quote is unquote. There

(13:02):
is a difference between the quote is unquote of identity
and the quote is unquote of constitution. To say Clark
Kent is Superman and Clark Kent is Kryptonian is to
use the word quote is unquote in two different ways.
The first is to speak of Kent's identity, and the

(13:23):
second is to speak of his constitution or what goes
in to make Kent what he is. Furthermore, d Silvestro
points out there is a difference between what one might
call the quote is potentially unquote of identity and the
quote is potentially unquote of constitution. I am sitting at

(13:44):
my desk while writing this article. My capacity to stand
means that if I were to stand up, I would
remain the same person I was while I was sitting down.
This is the quote is potentially unquote of identity, because
while I am, I potentially can be standing and will
remain the same individual. So one can say, with this

(14:06):
sense in mind, Wilcox's sitting is potentially Wilcox standing. However,
to return to the example of the car, the hunk
of metal's capacity to become a car does not imply
it will retain its numerical identity when it goes into
constructing a car. This is the quote is potentially unquote

(14:27):
of constitution, because a hunk of metal can potentially become
a car, but it will not retain its identity through
being made into the car. So in this sense, the
pile of metal is potentially a car. Finally, among the
many remaining distinctions concerning potentialities that could be drawn, the
following one is relevant for this discussion. Humans develop their

(14:51):
capacities over time, like all living things, but as rational
animals Aristotle's term, humans develop some capacity cities involuntarily and
others voluntarily. The capacity for consciousness is a capacity that
naturally develops in virtue of human nature. The capacity to

(15:11):
speak English is not. Humans have the inherent capacity to
speak a language, but not the inherent capacity to speak English,
since English is socially constructed. So while I did not
voluntarily develop the capacity to speak English, it developed in
me because I grew up in an English speaking culture.

(15:31):
My capacity to speak Italian is one I must voluntarily develop,
and the capacity to speak English is one a native
Italian speaker must voluntarily develop. So my capacity to speak
English or Italian is rooted in the inherent human capacity
to speak a language. Think of this distinction as natural

(15:52):
versus acquired capacities. Relevance to abortion. By now it should
be obvious with this discussion has to do with the
abortion issue. The human embryo has the active potential to
develop personal properties such as consciousness, rationality, and the ability
to communicate via language. Since this active potential is rooted

(16:15):
in a person's nature as a rational animal, a human
embryo is thus a rational entity by nature. It does
not have the presently exercisable example, first order capacity to
be rational, but it has the inherent example second order
capacity to be rational, which is just a capacity to

(16:36):
get the present capacity for rationality. So even though a
human embryo is not presently rational. It is right to
say the embryo is rational because it is rational by nature,
just like it is right to say I am a
rational entity while I am asleep, even though during sleep
I am not presently able to exercise that capacity due

(16:58):
to being unconscious. Furthermore, the reason the embryo eventually will
become an adult is that she is a human being
with a human nature, and it is this nature that
directs her development as a human being. Moreover, it is
in virtue of this nature that she retains her identity
as a rational person through change. Few would deny that

(17:20):
I am the same individual I was ten years ago,
even though I have undergone change. By the same reasoning,
I am thus the same individual I was when I
was an embryo. And as such, if it is wrong
to kill me now, it was wrong to kill me,
then Singer is a potential X an actual X. Consider

(17:43):
now some possible objections to this thesis that human embryos
are rational persons worthy of protection. Bioethicist Peter Singer offers
the following statements as counterexamples to the idea that a
potential X has the same value as X. Or has
all the rights of x quote. To pull out a

(18:03):
sprouting eggcorn is not the same as cutting down a
venerable oak. To drop a live chicken into a pot
of boiling water would be much worse than doing the
same to an egg. Prince Charles is a potential king
of England, but he does not now have the rights
of a king unquote do. Singer's examples counter the thesis

(18:25):
that human embryos are rational persons worthy of protection not
at all. As I have shown, the sprouting eggcorn is
the same entity as the mature oak tree it will
one day become, even though one might indeed value the
mature oak tree over the sprouting eggcorn. Singer's analogy introduces
the notion of intrinsic value. If an entity has intrinsic value,

(18:50):
its value is dependent on what it is. Its value
comes from within itself, and not from what it can
do for others. As a rational, volitional per a human
being possesses intrinsic value and is thus always valuable. Plants
and trees, however, are not valuable in and of themselves.

(19:10):
Their value comes from outside themselves. They instrumentally are valuable
only in so far as persons, say, need them to
take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen, to provide shade,
or to use them for materials. The instrumental value of
trees changes in accordance with their usefulness to intrinsically valuable persons,

(19:33):
so it is incorrect to think one is not cutting
down the same entity. But there are other considerations besides potential,
that make it a different matter to cut down a
full blown tree than to uproot a sprouting acorn. A
chicken comes from an egg, but it is not the
egg itself, and chickens, like trees, are not intrinsically valuable,

(19:56):
but are instrumentally valuable. They are valuable only in so
far as a person, say, takes pleasure in raising them
or has need to consume them for food. Finally, Prince
Charles does not have the rights of a king, despite
being a potential king, because he is not a king
by nature. There are conditions that must be satisfied before

(20:17):
he can ascend to the British throne, such as the
death of his mother, the reigning Queen. But humans are
rational by nature, and it is this rational nature that
grounds a human's intrinsic value. Humans are never potential persons.
They are actual persons with potential. Tully kitten intelligence serum.

(20:41):
Philosopher Michael Tooley offers the following thought experiment as a
counter argument to the idea that killing potential persons is
intrinsically wrong. Suppose a scientist develops an intelligence causing serum
that can cause a cat to develop all the properties
we ordinarily associate with persons, for example, consciousness, self awareness,

(21:04):
the ability to use language. Now suppose we have two kittens,
giving the serum to one kitten but not to the other.
Suppose we then give a quote neutralizing unquote agent to
the kitten we gave the serum to before it completes
the intelligence gaining process. It seems the action of giving
the neutralizing agent to the first cat and not giving

(21:27):
the intelligent serum to the second one at all are
morally the same. So this shows that we are not
obligated to complete the process of personhood once it is begun.
The idea that Tully is arguing for is that if
we were to inject an intelligent serum into a kitten,
causing it to develop first order capacities that make it

(21:48):
a person, we would be morally obligated to protect and
not kill the cat person. However, it doesn't follow from
this fact that if we begin the process to turn
the cat into a person, we then would be obligated
to let that process finish. Tully's thought experiment assumes that
unborn humans are potential persons, which, as I have shown,

(22:11):
is false. Human embryos are actual persons with potential. Also,
like Singer, he conflates two different senses of potential. If
we were to create an intelligent serum for kittens, we
could say they have the potential to be persons, but
they would have this potential passively. One must act on

(22:32):
them from the outside in order to make them persons.
They do not have this potential actively to develop themselves.
If they had the potential actively, then we would be
obligated to let the process finish. But cats are not
persons by nature. Since we have no obligation to turn
them into persons, we also have no obligation to finish

(22:54):
the intelligence giving process once we begin it. But once
a new human being has been created through the procreative
act of sex, we have an actual person, and we
are now obligated to allow that person to develop according
to her nature. Allow me to reiterate that, since the
human embryo is a rational entity from fertilization, and all

(23:18):
changes it will undergo are within its internal programming, its
nature to undergo all its changes are identity preserving. So
I was the same entity as an embryo that I
am now. Since it is seriously wrong to kill me now,
it was wrong to kill me then. Since all human
embryos share the same human nature, it is always seriously

(23:43):
wrong to kill a human embryo without very strong justification.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Thank you for listening to another episode from the Christian
Research Journal Reads podcast, which provides audio articles of Christian
Research Journal articles. If you go to e whip dot org,
you will find a brand new article for the Christian
Research Journal published weekly. In addition, please subscribe to our
other podcasts. Wherever you find your favorite podcast, you will

(24:13):
find the Christian Research Journal Reads podcast, the Postmodern Realities podcast,
which features interviews with Christian Research Journal authors, our flagship podcast,
The Bible answer Man Broadcast, and the Hank Unplugged podcast,
where CRI President Hank Canagraph takes you out of the

(24:36):
studio and into his study to engage in in depth,
free flowing essential Christian conversations on critical issues with some
of the most interesting and informative people on the planet.
At equipp dot org, you will also find a lot
of resources to equip you, including many thousands of Christian

(24:57):
research journal articles. That's e q

Speaker 2 (25:00):
U I P dot O, r G