Abstract
In this chapter, I defend the first step of the main argument: if something is human, it has a set of typical human capacities. A more precise way of putting this step is as follows: there is some set, H, of capacities, such that for any individual X, if X is human, then X has H. I defend this step in the face of three main problem areas: the obvious diversity of capacities among normal humans, the nebulous sense in which undeveloped humans have capacities, and the apparent absence of certain capacities among abnormal humans.
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Notes
- 1.
More generally (if more pedantically), even if X and Y are the same number of developmental steps from having a certain first-order capacity, on a less fine-grained way of individuating orders in a hierarchy of capacities, they might be different numbers of developmental steps from having the first-order capacity, on a more fine-grained way of individuating those orders.
- 2.
Some of what follows in the remaining parts of this chapter and the next overlaps with my “Capacities, Hierarchies, and the Moral Status of Normal Human Infants,” Journal of Value Inquiry 43: 479–492 (December 2009).
- 3.
Nagel (1979, p. 6).
- 4.
Tooley (1983, p. 87).
- 5.
Tooley (1983, p. 168).
- 6.
Tooley (1983, p. 203).
- 7.
Tooley (1983, pp. 204–205).
- 8.
Tooley (1983, p. 2).
- 9.
Tooley (1983, p. 117).
- 10.
Tooley (1983, p. 117).
- 11.
Tooley (1983, p. 153).
- 12.
Tooley (1983, p. 153).
- 13.
Tooley (1983, p. 153).
- 14.
Tooley (1983, p. 153).
- 15.
Tooley (1983, p. 153).
- 16.
Tooley (1983, pp. 153–154).
- 17.
McMahan (2002, p. 29).
- 18.
McMahan (2002, p. 29).
- 19.
Thanks to Chris Tollefsen for helpful comments on improving this paragraph.
- 20.
Kuhse and Singer (1994, p. 69).
- 21.
Kuhse and Singer (1994, p. 70).
- 22.
Kuhse and Singer (1994, p. 71).
- 23.
Nagel (1979, pp. 147–164).
- 24.
Parfit (1984, pp. 245–248).
- 25.
This reply goes back at least as far as when Michael Lockwood considered Mary Warnock’s statement in a television interview that “before fourteen days the embryo hasn’t yet decided how many people it is going to be.” He writes: “It is, however, independently clear that she [Warnock] is not personally inclined to set much store by that fact, morally speaking. And rightly so, in my opinion: any philosopher who took that as grounds for denying that early human embryos are human beings would, it seems to me, have to deny that ordinary adult human organisms are human beings, if Sperry and others turned out to be correct in claiming that the effect of cutting the corpus callosum, which links the two hemispheres of the cerebral cortex, is to transform one human being into two.” See Lockwood (1998, p. 190).
- 26.
Becker (1983), quoted in Dombrowski (1997, p. 2).
- 27.
Dombrowski (1997, p. 21).
- 28.
Dombrowski (1997, p. 26).
- 29.
Broad (1933, p. 267).
- 30.
Broad (1933, p. 267).
- 31.
All quotations in this paragraph refer to Prior (1985, p. 7).
- 32.
Prior (1985, p. 6).
- 33.
Prior (1985, p. 8).
- 34.
Prior (1985, p. 6).
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DiSilvestro, R. (2010). Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Also: Humans, Our Capacities, and the Powers We Share. In: Human Capacities and Moral Status. Philosophy and Medicine(), vol 108. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8537-5_2
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