SOULS, STEM CELLS, AND THE FACTS OF LIFE



EMBRYOS, SOULS, AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION

David W. Shoemaker

327 Shatzel Hall

Department of Philosophy

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, OH 43403

dshoema@bgnet.bgsu.edu

ABSTRACT FOR “EMBRYOS, SOULS, AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION”

While appealing to the "fact" that embryos have souls does not constitute a legitimate public argument against stem cell (and other embryonic) research in a secular democracy, it is nevertheless an argument that continually makes its way into public discussions of the issue. While nearly all philosophers have summarily shunted this argument aside, I intend to take it seriously, both for itself and for other interesting issues it raises in the philosophy of religion and ontology generally. I start with the claim that embryos are ensouled from the moment of conception, reiterating the familiar view that such a position in general has difficulty handling cases of twinning. But I then go beyond standard treatments of the issue to consider more specific Thomistic and Augustinian conceptions of the soul in some detail to explore whether either conception has a way to avoid these familiar problems. The Thomistic view turns out to be logically impossible in light of less-familiar fusion cases. The Augustinian conception, on the other hand, runs into a number of crippling (but heretofore unnoticed) ontological difficulties. In particular, it cannot coherently address the question of whether or not human beings are three-dimensional objects, enduring through time, or four-dimensional objects, perduring through time. The soul view, in either conception, then, ultimately yields too many theological and/or metaphysical problems for it to be of any use to its advocates.

EMBRYOS, SOULS, AND THE FOURTH DIMENSION

Human embryos are not mere biological tissues or clusters of cells; they are the tiniest of human beings. Thus, we have a moral responsibility not to deliberately harm them . . . .

- Statement from Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics, 1999[i]

Why would someone believe that an embryo is a human being, albeit an exceedingly tiny one? It is merely a cluster of cells, after all, and it in no way resembles ordinary human beings like you and me, entities with the functional abilities to think, feel, locomote, laugh, love, and actually be seen by the naked eye. Furthermore, even if embryos were human beings, why would that fact alone generate a moral obligation on our part to refrain from harming them? In other words, what precisely is it about human beings that warrants their moral protection?

These sorts of questions have played a major role in the longstanding abortion debate, of course, which nevertheless generally focuses not on the embryo but on the fetus. Specifically, abortion theorists typically want to figure out (a) what the ontological status of the fetus is, i.e., into what category of the world it fits, and (b) what its ontological status implies, if anything, about its moral status, i.e., how entities categorized-like-that ought to be treated.[ii] Fetuses, though, especially late-stage fetuses, at least resemble clear-cut human beings – specifically infants – rather closely, and so granting them the ontological status of human beings is a rather easy pill for many to swallow. The difficulty, though, comes in establishing a coherent and/or non-question-begging argument about the fetus's moral status from there.[iii]

However, the debate over stem cell research (and, for that matter, therapeutic cloning, and other forms of embryonic research), while similar in this formal respect to the abortion debate, is still importantly different regarding the subject of the brouhaha, viz., the embryo. It is an embryo from which the enormously significant stem cells are harvested, for example, and it is (for now, anyway) only embryos that produce this rich potential. Once an embryo has developed into a fetus, such harvesting potential is lost. So there are different reasons offered for engaging in the various procedures: abortion is typically desired on the basis of its expected utility for the mother/parents, whereas stem cell research and the like are typically desired on the basis of their expected utility for, in the grandest of schemes, humanity in general. Nevertheless, the reasons offered against both procedures typically boil down to the same essential fact: both abortion and the harvesting of stem cells involve the destruction of a living human organism. And in either case if this organism is actually a human being, and it is (for whatever reason) wrong to destroy human beings, then it would be wrong to destroy the organism in question. Now as has already been noted, late-stage fetuses certainly resemble clear-cut human beings (of the infant variety), so a case may be made for their status as human beings, which would get them a pass on at least the first of our two general questions. But to return to the query at the outset, why on earth should we think an embryo is a human being?[iv]

The stem cell issue is primarily a public policy issue, but despite the fact that this debate is taking place within secular democracies like the U.S. and the U.K., religious arguments against such research are regularly heard and taken into consideration by various public advisory committees, leaving many secular liberals with their collective jaws agape.[v] But while there are very good reasons for why such religion-based arguments should be rendered weightless as justifications for public policy, I propose instead for now to take them quite seriously, for two reasons. First, a large number of citizens accept these religion-based arguments about human beings, and their beliefs about the limits of public funding for certain scientific pursuits flow directly from such arguments. Failing at least to address these arguments, then, leaves the impression that the government is silencing a significant portion of its citizenry, and the undercurrent of resentment produced by such a perceived silencing may express itself in less peaceful ways in the future (think here of abortion clinic bombings). Second, even if the religion-based view is discounted at the political level, it still represents a moral stance, one producing various publicly expressed (if not politically legitimate) judgments about rightness and wrongness that may ultimately be influential in generating enough public pressure to stop certain scientific pursuits altogether, despite the absence of any legal constraints.

My aim in this paper, then, is to deal with these arguments head-on. More specifically, I hope to show that the best developed and most popularly cited religion-based argument(s) about the ontological status of embryos/fetuses, focusing on the nature of human beings and the beginning of life, yields, upon close inspection, an overwhelming number of problematic theological and metaphysical implications, many of which have not been discussed before. But because this is an issue in which the biological details are crucially significant, we must start there.

Biological Basics

We begin, as I suppose we should, at conception. When an ovum is fertilized, it is a zygote. Fertilization takes place in the oviduct, and in the days following fertilization, a number of divisions take place, as what is now a very early-stage embryo travels down the oviduct into the uterus. For the first five days of development, the cells (called "blastomeres") are entirely undifferentiated, that is, at this stage they do not yet look or act like any particular specialized cells of normal adults, and none of them is yet committed to any particular direction, although each of them could potentially form any such cell, or even develop into their own full-fledged infant (a capacity known as “totipotence”). At about five days after fertilization, a significant developmental event occurs: certain cells at the outer layer separate off from the inner cell mass (ICM) to form a trophectoderm, a kind of protective circle of cells around the ICM which enables implantation of the embryo into the uterine wall and will eventually form part of the placenta. This stage of the embryo (consisting of an ICM and surrounding trophectoderm) is called a "blastocyst." Once the blastocyst is implanted, mediated by the trophectoderm, the ICM cells soon differentiate, becoming other cell types whose developmental potential is now much more restricted.[vi]

Stem cells are derived from a pre-implantation blastocyst. In such cell-collections, the ICM is separated from the trophectoderm (whose cells are already differentiated), those ICM cells are then cultured, and the cells ultimately derived from those ICM cells are themselves stem cells, which can "proliferate and replace themselves indefinitely, yet maintain the developmental potential to form any cell type."[vii]

By now the possible benefits of stem cells are well-known, for after several months of culture, they have the capacity to form potentially any cell of the human body, from blood to nerve to muscle, possibly enabling us to have unlimited supplies of specific, transplantable cell types for the treatment of anything from leukemia to Parkinson's to heart disease.[viii] But establishing stem cell lines requires separation of the ICM from the trophectoderm, a procedure that, of course, dissolves the embryo, of which both are by now constituent parts. Therefore, if the blastocyst-stage pre-implantation embryo is already a human being, the removal of the ICM for culture (which effectively deprives it of the ability to develop into a fetus and beyond) kills a human being. Thus the controversy.

There is one last significant biological consideration. Because of the incredible plasticity of the pre-implantation embryonic cells, they are capable of both fission and fusion. If, for example, these collections of cells are divided, each half (once implanted) has the capacity to develop into its own normal individual fetus. This is, of course, how twins are formed. On the other hand, though, if two already separated early-stage embryos are pushed back together (or fuse naturally), they can intermingle to form a single embryo that may be brought to term as a single, individual infant. In addition, it is theoretically possible to fuse together two early-stage embryos, each composed of cells of different genotypes, to produce a single infant with four parents.[ix] This remarkable possibility will be important for the arguments to come.

We may now turn to the more philosophical issues at stake. Specifically, we have before us the crucial question of ontology: is the pre-implantation blastocyst-stage embryo a human being? I begin with an exposition of a very familiar reply.

Religion and Public Justifications

The most popular contemporary immaterialist answer to this question, based on the stated view of the Roman Catholic Church, is as follows: the embryo is indeed a human being, and what makes it so is that it has an immortal soul, a soul implanted by God into the physical organism from the moment of conception. In doing this, God not only renders the developing life form a human being, but also simultaneously renders it deserving of moral protection. In ensouling the conceptus, God not only makes it a creature with a certain ontological status (human being), but also instantly establishes its moral status, as a being with dignity, etc.[x] The following passage from the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to certain questions of the day, authored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987, makes this view explicit:

From the moment of conception, the life of every human being is to be respected in an absolute way because man is the only creature on earth that God has ‘wished for himself’ and the spiritual soul of each man is ‘immediately created’ by God; his whole being bears the image of the Creator. Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves ‘the creative action of God’ and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end. God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can, in any circumstance, claim for himself the right to destroy directly an innocent human being.[xi]

What, though, is meant by “soul”? One thing that cannot be meant is what Descartes meant, viz., a thinking thing. No one who advocates the view that embryos have souls also holds that embryos actually think. So to have a soul, on this view, requires no activated psychological properties. Nevertheless, given the host of rational attitudes a human being must eventually have both to God and to the perfection of knowledge, and given the (dogma-based) need to distinguish between humans and non-human animals via reference to souls,[xii] the capacity for thought and rationality must somehow play a role in fixing the meaning of “souls.” And so it does. Current Catholic theology thus defines “soul” as “an individual substance of a rational nature.”[xiii]

There are four aspects worth noting in this definition. To take the last part first, souls have a rational nature, so while it is part of their nature to think, that aspect may not be active, or yet activated, for certain stretches of their existence. To take a rough analogy, it is part of the nature of a clock to tell time – clocks have a time-telling nature – but if no battery is installed in it, say, that part of the clock’s nature will not be activated. Similarly, it is a functioning brain that activates the soul’s rational capacities on earth; nevertheless, even without a brain the soul has a rational nature. Second, the soul is a substance, which means (in part) that it is an enduring entity, a continuant that remains the same across time and change. Third, the soul is an immaterial substance, an unextended thing. It is thus something for which there could in principle be no empirical evidence. Fourth, the soul is an individual substance, one and only one thing. Given that it is unextended, it is indivisible. It is a simple substance, then, [xiv] having neither extension nor composite parts, and this idea supports the theological view that the soul is immortal, because incorruptible.[xv] It is the possession of this individuated, substantial (but non-physical) thing, therefore, that renders an organism a human being, and if God creates it immediately to be possessed by a newly-created conceptus, then that developing organism is a human being at every stage from there on out.

There are many questions we might ask here. For instance, how could we possibly know if an embryo were to have a soul? If souls were truly immaterial, then determining this would be impossible. Given this problem, what possible non-arbitrary reason could there be for marking conception as the spot where ensoulment occurs, as opposed to any other stage of the developmental timetable? Indeed, throughout history various theologians and religious philosophers have pointed to different stages as the points of ensoulment. Aquinas, for instance, following Aristotle, claimed that male fetuses received souls about forty days after conception, while female fetuses received souls about eighty days after conception, presumably because these were the days when fetal movement was typically first detected (although one might harbor some suspicions about the statistical methodology at work here). And other candidates for the stage of ensoulment have included viability, brain activity, and the point at which the primitive streak has developed.[xvi] But each chosen stage is just as suitable a candidate as all the others, insofar as we could have no evidence whatsoever to believe that one is more likely than the others. Because of our complete lack of evidence in these matters, it might be thought, we have no reason to accept the claim that embryos have souls.

This is an epistemological argument, however, that may simply have no bearing on the actual metaphysical facts of the matter. For it still seems logically possible, at any rate, that embryos do have souls, regardless of the fact that we could never know that. If so, then if the having of a soul renders its bearer a human being, embryos might, for all we know, be human beings, in which case a "better safe than sorry" argument could be offered to extend some moral protection to them.[xvii]

To avoid this line of attack, therefore, many people in favor of stem cell research have offered a general and purely political argument against the use of the soul argument in matters of public policy.[xviii] It is a familiar one, and it goes as follows. If one's support for the claim that embryos are human beings is that they have souls, then this sort of argument is simply illegitimate in a secular democracy, even if it turns out ultimately to be true. When offering a public justification for some policy or other, one's arguments must appeal to reasons that respect the equality of all citizens. Arguments having their sole source in a specific and quite controversial religious view fail to do so, however, insofar as they appeal to premises utterly unacceptable to citizens of other religions, or to citizens who reject religion altogether. A public policy adopted on the basis of such religious justifications, then, would involve state promotion of one religious view over other religious and non-religious views, rendering the citizens who advocate these alternatives without a voice, unequal with respect to this policy. This is not to say that a viable public justification for religious folks who want to protect embryos cannot be found; it is rather to say that any premises on which they build such a public argument would have to be ones that respect the equality of all citizens. What would need to be found, then, is some basis for the conclusion that is shared by all reasonable citizens.[xix]

While I believe this to be a knockdown argument against the religion-based justification with respect to public policy, it will be, as already noted, terribly unsatisfactory for practical reasons to an advocate of the view, and it also does nothing to undermine the moral argument itself. The soul argument is repeatedly and cursorily dismissed in the philosophical literature,[xx] but I nevertheless believe it to be worthwhile to take the argument quite seriously, in part for the practical and moral reasons already cited, but also because of its extremely interesting implications for other important issues in the philosophy of religion and metaphysics generally. I believe we will find that the view ultimately is either absurd or commits its advocates to some very troubling implications.[xxi]

Was I An Embryo?

I doubt I will cause any theological controversy by suggesting first that souls are intended to provide fairly significant unity relations. Specifically, an ensouled entity is unified both synchronically and diachronically by its soul. At any given time, for instance, what unifies the various physical parts of a material ensouled entity is its immaterial soul. What makes its collection of parts one unified thing is that there is an indivisible individual soul attached to it. In addition, this single soul is what provides unity across time (given its status as a substance). Insofar as it would be the essence of a human being, X at t1 would be identical to Y at t2 (assuming X and Y were both ensouled human beings) if, and only if, Y's soul were numerically identical to X's soul. This latter feature is crucial to the eschatological requirements of the theological view: the unity of my soul across time enables me to survive the death of my body in heaven (or hell). Someone in heaven will be me just in case that person is – or has – the same soul I was – or had – on earth.[xxii]

On this overall view, then, a human being is an entity deeply unified both at a time and over time by his or her soul. So if a pre-implantation embryo were a human being in virtue of having a soul, this fact would have two implications. First, the various cells of the embryo would be unified as one individual entity – a human being – at that time. Second, that synchronically unified individual entity would be numerically identical to all the later stages of the fully developed organism, given the further standard assumption that a spatio-temporally continuous body houses the same soul throughout its lifetime (that is, it is assumed that souls do not “jump” from one body to another).[xxiii] If all this is true, therefore, I now am identical to – I am the same human being as – the fertilized egg from which I developed many years ago, given that the exact same essential substance underlies and unifies us both. I was indeed, it seems, an embryo.[xxiv]

To evaluate this view, we may begin with the issue of synchronic identity. Ordinarily, when applied to talk of human beings/persons, the question of synchronic identity is about the unity relation between various mental states, i.e., what unifies various simultaneous yet distinct perceptions at time t as being those of one person? Obviously, though, an embryo has no mental states. The issue of its synchronic identity can only be a question, then, about its various and distinct cells. The advocate of the soul view answers that some collection of cells is unified as a human being at t in virtue of its having a soul at t. This way of putting the matter implies that there is another (antecedent) ontological object in play here, however. After all, to identify the human being at issue, we cannot point to a soul; instead, we must point to the collection of physical cells that together are inferred to constitute the ensouled entity.[xxv] But then what is it about those cells that privileges them to be included as part of the unified, ensouled entity? The answer, of course, cannot be that what makes them a distinct ontological object at all is that they are ensouled. Instead, they must already constitute an ontological object that is or becomes ensouled. What the soul allegedly does is unify the various cells into one human being, but the cells together must already constitute a distinct ontological object in order then to be categorized as another distinct ontological object in virtue of their possession of a soul. If this were not the case, we would have no means of even identifying the object under discussion. Thus, the relevant, identifiable ontological object the cells constitute is that of a human embryo, and it is such an embryo, according to the theological advocate, that is ensouled, rendering it then not just an embryo but also a human being.

But if this is the case, then what precisely is the metaphysical relation between embryos and human beings? More specifically, with respect to the question of synchronic identity, what is the relation between what unifies the cells at t qua embryo and what unifies them at t qua human being? Consider, for example, what happens at around five days after fertilization, when certain cells separate off from the ICM to form the trophectoderm. The entire collection, including the outer layer, still falls under the rubric of “embryo” (or, more precisely, the stage of the embryo called a blastocyst). But it is only the cells of the ICM whose descendants will form a fetus and then an infant. Are the cells of the trophectoderm, which are synchronically unified with the cells of the ICM at this time as an embryo, also unified as part of a single human being via the soul? If so, then the shedding of the placenta as afterbirth (and its eventual casual destruction) would seem to have heretofore unrecognized moral implications, insofar as it would involve the destruction of at least part of a human being. Surely this cannot be right, though, and as far as I know, no one holds that the placenta is part of a human being. If not, then the ontological object to be ensouled is not the embryo but the ICM. But the ICM does not come into existence until around five days post-conception, which might introduce a wedge against the soul theorist who wants to maintain that human beings (via souls) come into existence at conception. And this could be all the wedge the stem cell theorist needs: if stem cells could be derived from the cell mass prior to the formation of the trophectoderm, then no human beings would be destroyed in the process, and thus there would be no such soul-based objections to doing so.

One response on the soul theorist’s behalf, though, might be that the identity of the human being does not necessarily track any specific, unified, material ontological objects across time. So while the ensouled object at any given time (synchronic identity) will correspond to some identifiable material ontological object, the object to which it corresponds at some other time may be different. Thus while the ensouled human being is a zygote on the first day, it may be merely an ICM on the fifth day (and not the entire embryo). Clearly the ICM is a direct descendant of the zygote, though, and while our typical conceptual categorization includes the trophectoderm as part of the embryo, it is only part of that embryo that is significant for fixing the referent of “human beings.”[xxvi]

What this response does is shift the focus from synchronic identity to diachronic identity, rendering the former derivative from the latter, at least with respect to identification. In other words, identification of the relevant material ontological object at a time will depend entirely on identification of the relevant material ontological object across time. So while human beings may not correspond precisely to embryos post-trophectoderm, once we fix the appropriate unity relation across time (with respect to the relevant material ontological object being tracked), we will (only) then be able to fix what material ontological object is the human being at any particular time, for it will be whatever stage in the life of the overarching object that is appropriately related to its other stages.

Let us turn then to considerations of diachronic identity. Consider first the familiar problem of twinning. At this point in development, the ICM cells are still undifferentiated, so the collection could (and occasionally does) divide into two or more cohesive camps, each of which then develops into its own individual fetus, and this may occur anywhere from the two-cell stage to approximately fourteen days post-conception. What is the status of the soul in this case?

The possibility of twinning has been much discussed in the literature (albeit rarely with respect to souls), and it poses a genuine threat to the coherence of the theological view on which we are focusing.[xxvii] The reason I am going to discuss it yet again is actually twofold. First, to be as sympathetic to the soul view as possible, I need to spell out all the crucial details of this objection to it so I can explore in equal detail possible rebuttals from the theological camp. There are a variety of ways the soul theorist might handle this possibility, yet these ways are simply not discussed by writers who advance the twinning scenario.[xxviii] Second, the problem of twinning raises a very important issue regarding the general ontological picture of the soul theorist. Specifically, I believe this theorist (under one specific conception of souls) cannot maintain a coherent view of the persistence conditions for his ensouled human beings, i.e., to the question, “Do human beings endure or perdure?” this theorist has no coherent answer. Consequently, I beg indulgence from some readers for whom this initial discussion may seem like a reheated rehashing. There are larger issues afoot, but it will take a bit of time to set them up.

Onward to the possibility of twinning, then. If, as already noted, the soul is a simple substance, then it cannot divide along with the dividing cells. If the pre-fission cells are ensouled, therefore, what happens to that human being – call it Adam – during fission? There are four possibilities: (1) Adam survives as both fission products, i.e., Adam’s soul is embodied in both of the survivors; (2) Adam ceases to exist altogether (here on earth, anyway), and the two fission products are two new human beings, each with their own new souls; (3) Adam survives as one of the fission products, while the other at that point becomes a newly-ensouled human being; (4) Adam is actually two human beings, with two souls, until fission, at which point one soul serves to unify one clump of cells, and the other soul serves to unify the other clump of cells. Nevertheless, there are problems with all four possibilities.

We can rule out (1) right away. If developed to term, the fission products would eventuate in two spatio-temporally distinct entities, capable of living on opposite sides of the earth, undergoing radically different experiences, and perhaps even fighting each other. Nevertheless, on this possibility, they would together still constitute only one human being (because only one soul). But this would wreak havoc with our ordinary conception of human beings. If one kills another, would it then be a suicide? If, through a bizarrely incestuous turn of events, they have sex with one another, is it merely masturbation? And so on. Clearly, the two fission products would eventually have to be two human beings, and thus, if the formula is one soul per human being, two souls.

What of (2)? On this possibility, Adam is destroyed (put out of commission on earth) by fission, making way for two new souls to pop into existence, each corresponding to one fission product. At the very least, this possibility raises a new angle on the problem of evil: since God regularly allows such divisions to take place, he is regularly allowing the pointless (earthly) deaths of numerous human beings. Indeed, this possibility raises an even worse scenario: not only is God allowing these pointless deaths, but because he would be responsible for ensouling the doomed-to-fission cells in the first place, he would also be responsible for causing them to die as human beings. Surely, if he were omniscient, he would have known that the cells would divide. Why ensoul them pre-fission, then, if failing to do so would prevent the needless deaths of such human beings? Indeed, why should the creation of two new human beings come only at the expense of the life of one human being? On its face, there seems to be no available theodicy that could plausibly account for this possibility's particular brand of senseless evil.

To avoid such worries altogether, though, it might be the case that God waits to ensoul potential splitters until after fission occurs, given that he would know when this would take place. But this alternative would leave some embryos, namely those "predestined" for fission, soul-less, and thus not human beings, which once again would violate the theological assumption we are working with that the life of all human beings begins at conception. If we allow this move, the lives of twins (qua human beings) would only begin post-fission. Consequently, such a possibility would presumably make harvesting stem cells from destined-for-fission embryos (assuming we could figure out which ones were so destined) perfectly permissible, if the only relevant consideration for such procedures were the ontological status of the embryo; destroying the embryo here would be more akin to contraception than abortion. Nevertheless, because the destruction of such embryos would mean the lives of two human beings would be prevented from coming to fruition, as opposed to only one in the case of a non-fissioning embryo, and because many Catholic theologians also find fault with contraception (for precisely this sort of reason), there may still be a case against doing so. Nevertheless, because this possibility would significantly alter the stated position on the ontological status of the embryo as already being a human being, it should be set aside.

Next consider (3), according to which Adam’s soul goes with one fission product, while a new soul pops into existence to be possessed by the other fission product. Once again, this alternative would imply that not all human beings come into existence at conception; instead, some human beings come into existence only at fission. In this case, though, since the presumption is that one soul (human being) did exist from the moment of conception, we have a puzzle: which fission product would be Adam, and which would have the new soul? There would seem to be no non-arbitrary reason God could have for picking one over the other, given that each would be exactly similar to the other. But perhaps this is not too brittle a bullet for the theologian to bite: it may not be objectionable that God occasionally acts entirely on the basis of whim or divine coin-flip. More on this point in a moment, however.

Finally, consider alternative (4), according to which there are two souls present all along from conception, and when fission occurs, each soul now becomes attached to the separate cell-clumps. This possibility allows the theological advocate what he seems most to want – viz., that the lives of all human beings begin at conception – but it does so at great cost. For one thing, it implies that two human beings can have one “body” (prior to the fission), but this possibility violates the one body/one soul assumption. Perhaps, though, because the co-habitation would only be temporary (and God would know this), no significant problems would ensue.[xxix] Not so fast, though, for now we can introduce the less-explored idea of fusion. As mentioned earlier, already-divided embryos could be pushed back together to form a single embryo once more that will, if implanted, develop normally into a single infant. What would happen to the two fissioned souls if we were to do so in this case? If souls are simple, individuated substances, then presumably they could not fuse together to form a single individual. So the only possibilities are that (a) both souls would remain housed in the fused embryo; (b) both would be replaced in the fused embryo by a new soul; or (c) only one of the two souls would live on in the fused embryo. Possibility (a) cannot be true, for it would again imply that two (or more!) human beings could exist simultaneously in one body, and the "temporariness" escape clause above would no longer be met, given that the infant would continue to develop its individual body into adulthood and beyond. A view implying that one adult body contained two wholly distinct and individual human beings would be absurd. Possibility (b) is problematic for two reasons. First, it seems an incredible waste: why would God remove both souls (allowing two human beings to die on earth) when one could (easily?) be transferred to the fused embryo? Second, this possibility would again mean that the new embryo would be a new human being, a human being coming into existence sometime post-conception, an implication that violates the general theological assumption under which we are working.[xxx] So (c) would have to be the safest theological bet: one soul would be removed, while the other would remain and be attached to the new fused product.

But there are a few problems with this proposal as well, depending on one’s conception of the soul. There are, in fact, two importantly different conceptions of the soul the Church has worked with over the years, conceptions that remain (in some quarters) competitors to this day. On the one hand, there is the Thomistic version of the soul, a conception derived in part from Aristotle. On the other hand, there is the Augustinian version of the soul, a conception derived in part from Plato. According to the Thomistic view, the soul is by nature embodied; it is a formal design which has no real existence unless it is instantiated in a particular body, much like a coin, whose essence consists in both its formal design (shared by all such coins) and its particular physical construction.[xxxi] This is a hylomorphic view of souls, and Aquinas argued that it is only this conception of the soul that can make sense of the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body in the afterlife, for without a body there could be no particularized person.[xxxii] According to the Augustinian view, which is a dualistic conception of the soul, the soul can exist independently of the body, and it is only temporarily (on earth) housed – some might say trapped – in a body. Salvation thus provides an escape from the boundaries of the body, which produces sinful passions that must be overcome.[xxxiii] On this view, the immortal soul – which is essentially immaterial – exists without a body in the afterlife.

The Thomistic view is presented as Church orthodoxy now, although the Augustinian view remains popular among some theologians, as well as much of the public (perhaps due to the reinforcing influence of Descartes). Up to this point, it has not been necessary to distinguish them, but what I wish to argue now is that, no matter which conception of the soul is maintained, there will be seriously troublesome theological or metaphysical implications in light of the cases I have articulated.

Return, then, to possibilities (b) and (c) in the fusion case. First, if one maintains the hylomorphic conception of souls, such that one includes in one’s theology belief in the resurrection of the body, what happens to the ensouled human beings that existed prior to fusion? In possibility (c), one disappears; in possibility (b), two disappear. But in neither case has any human tissue died (or disappeared) at all. If the human beings have died, where are their bodies? This certainly does not bode well for the resurrection of the body, if there are no existing bodies to be resurrected.[xxxiv] The “life begins at conception” theologian maintaining a Thomistic version of the soul seems to be committed to all four of the following propositions: (1) each “body” prior to fusion was ensouled; (2) souls cannot fuse together; (3) there can only be a one-to-one correlation between bodies and souls; and (4) there is a resurrection of all persons (i.e., all person’s bodies) in the afterlife. But if (a)-(c) are the only possible options in the fusion case, then this theologian’s position must embody a contradiction: option (a) contradicts proposition (3), and options (b) and (c) contradict proposition (4). Which should be given up? What motivates the claim that (a)-(c) are the only options is proposition (1). If the theologian gives this up (which seems the most plausible move), then what must also be given up is the claim that the life of all human beings begins at conception, however, which would provide the pro-stem-cell research theorist a significant wedge against the view.

On the other hand, perhaps this theologian would like to give up Thomism altogether, specifically proposition (4), by embracing instead the Augustinian conception of the soul. If this is done, then options (b) and (c) may not seem so problematic. After all, if souls are independent of bodies, they can certainly survive without them, and if God chooses to remove a soul from certain groupings of human cells, that does not mean that that soul (and any rational being it might become) could not survive in the afterlife. Now again, option (b) seems quite strange (God would be removing both souls when he could have just transferred one of them to the fused embryo), and it again denies that the life of all human beings begins at conception. So consider again the best option for the Augustinian, option (c), according to which God does indeed remove one soul and transfer the other to the fused embryo.

The first question to ask is which would be which? Each of the original embryos would have the same full-fledged human status, and each would seem an equally legitimate candidate for having its soul transferred to the fused entity. Once more we have a situation similar to the third alternative in the fission case: here too there simply would be no non-arbitrary reason for saying the survivor is identical to one of the pre-fusion humans over the other. Keep in mind that the thing God would have "attached" to it – the soul – would at this point itself have to be utterly featureless. No one who holds that embryos are ensouled human beings maintains that there is any thinking going on at that early stage; the rational capacities of the soul would not yet have been activated. But if the soul is immaterial, and it does not yet have a psychology, then there would seem to be nothing in virtue of which it would, at this point, anyway, be distinguishable from other such souls. It would be a completely featureless “nugget,” somehow constituting the essence of particular human beings, without itself being particularized yet in any way. Thus, there could in principle be no reason for God to assign the fused organism one soul over the other, based on their present properties. They would at this point be entirely interchangeable, entirely indistinguishable, and so there could be no basis at all on which to assign one of the pre-fusion souls into the fused organism. Indeed, this is precisely why Aristotle (and Aquinas) objected to the Platonic conception of souls in the first place.[xxxv]

There are two seriously problematic implications of the view, then. For one thing, if embryonic souls are featureless “nuggets,” then it is extremely difficult to believe that they could have any moral status whatsoever. What possible reason could there be to assign moral protection to an entity devoid at that time of any particularized features, with neither individuated material form nor any psychological characteristics? The least problematic alternatives in the fission and fusion cases involved a God assigning souls to various collections of cells entirely on arbitrary whim, but this would actually be completely unacceptable as a method of determining moral status. An updated version of the Euthyphro dilemma should incline us towards accepting instead that God ensouls embryos because they already have moral status (if they do at all), not that embryos have moral status because God ensouls them. But if this were the case, then we would need to look someplace other than souls for what provides embryos with that independent moral status.

Secondly, we should also not forget that a large percentage of embryos – numbering millions (or even billions) over the years – are spontaneously aborted post-implantation, often before the mother is even aware of her pregnancy. On the version of the soul view under discussion, we would have to maintain that this regular occurrence, albeit mostly undetected and/or ignored, constitutes an ongoing earthly destruction of human beings of massive proportions. And if every soul of these "tiniest of human beings" were immortal, living on in an afterlife, what exactly would be the point? They again would be featureless and indistinguishable, neither missed nor mourned, yet there would be millions of them simply "floating" around, capable of nothing, and, more importantly, entirely without a personal identity.[xxxvi] But this seems an ontology too pointlessly crowded to contemplate.[xxxvii]

The soul theorist should thus abandon the attempt to respond to the puzzles of fission and fusion by allowing that God might remove or install souls in an arbitrary way. If the embryo is going to twin, say, there are thus two options: either there were two souls (human beings) all along, or there were none until the twinning stage. If the latter, then there can be no objection to stem cell (and other early embryonic) research based on the objection that it destroys human beings. So the former option is the only way to go. I have discussed it only briefly to this point, but now it is time to explore it in depth. Doing so will reveal an underlying ontological picture required by the soul view that is the source of its ultimate downfall.

Dimensions and the Future

Consider a “snapshot” of the five-day-old embryo. We don’t yet know whether or not it will split into two (or more) distinct embryos. Nevertheless, the soul theorist wants to maintain that this entity is ensouled, that it is, at this time, a human being. Now while souls don’t exist in any spatial dimensions, human beings (as distinctly earthly entities) do. The question we need to consider, then, is how many dimensions do human beings take up? There are two rival theories. According to three-dimensionalism, human beings are three-dimensional objects, having spatial, but no temporal, parts, and they are wholly present from moment to moment. Across time, then, human beings are enduring objects. On the other hand, according to four-dimensionalism, human beings are four-dimensional objects, having not only spatial but also temporal parts, such that what exists from moment to moment are temporal stages of a spacetime worm. Across time, then, human beings are perduring objects.[xxxviii]

If souls are substances (as they clearly are on the Augustinian view still under discussion), then what is their role in these rival ontologies? They of course could not have any spatial parts, being immaterial. But if they are also simple substances, they could not have any temporal parts either.[xxxix] At any particular moment that a soul exists, it must be wholly present (in whatever sense we can make of that phrase as applied to souls). Souls must, then, endure across time (despite having no spatial location). And if souls are what makes some material object a human being, human beings must also, then, endure across time as three-dimensional objects.

The problem, though, is that the only coherent way to explain the goings-on in the fission and fusion cases is by employing a four-dimensional ontology of human beings. Consider the fission case once again, this time talking only about human beings (and not souls) in an intuitive sense. Recall the options: (1) Adam survives as both fission products; (2) Adam ceases to exist, and the fission products are two new human beings; (3) Adam survives as one of the fission products (while the other is a brand new human being); and (4) Adam was actually two human beings who branched off with separate bodies at fission. Thinking just in terms of our ordinary concept of human beings, (1) has to be false, simply because one does not equal two. Option (2) seems very hard to believe, for a variety of reasons, e.g., how can Adam have ceased to exist when no tissue whatsoever has ceased to exist? Why should the double success of there now being two entities exactly similar to Adam count somehow as a failure, as involving Adam’s death? Option (3) raises the arbitrariness issue: since both products are indeed exactly similar in every respect to Adam, what non-arbitrary reason could there be to mark one product as Adam and the other as not-Adam?

What of Option (4), though? It originally yielded the problem of two souls in one body, but removing talk of souls, as we are doing here, renders this option no longer problematic, if one adopts a four-dimensional view of human beings. If human beings are four-dimensional spacetime worms, then they have temporal parts, and so in this case the humans involved would be akin to roads that share a segment before branching: they would coincide for a brief temporal segment (while remaining distinct) before twinning, at which point their spacetime paths would branch off. For the four-dimensionalist, there just is no problem about coinciding, distinct objects at a time. The coinciding temporal parts of each object are identical, but that does not render the objects themselves identical. Think here of the famous lump/statue case, in which an artist buys a lump of clay on a Monday and creates a statue out of the lump on Tuesday (without, of course, destroying the lump in the process!).[xl] If the statue and the lump are distinct objects, what is involved in the identity conditions of each? They certainly share all their physical properties in common; but they don’t share the same historical properties: the lump has the property “exists on Monday,” while the statue does not. According to Leibniz’s Law, they cannot be identical to one another. But how can two exactly similar things, located in the same portion of spacetime, both exist? The four-dimensionalist answers that on Tuesday it is only a temporary part of each object that exists, that is wholly present. These temporary parts are indeed identical – that’s how they can both “fit” into this single location – but that does not at all mean that the two objects – the lump and the statue – are identical with one another, for the lump’s spacetime worm contains parts (on Monday, e.g.) not contained in the statue’s spacetime worm.

For the three-dimensionalist, though, there is a huge problem in explaining such events. How can two ontological objects completely overlap with one another, both being wholly present in the exact same spatial location at the exact same time, while nevertheless remaining distinct? There simply doesn’t seem room enough for both objects to “fit.” So if the statue and the lump on Tuesday are wholly present in the exact same region of spacetime, in virtue of what could they be distinct objects? And the same problem extends to the question of the human beings in Option (4) of the twinning case: if there are two human beings wholly present but occupying the exact same region of spacetime, in virtue of what could they possibly be two distinct human beings? There doesn’t seem room enough for both human beings to fit.

It is here that the soul theorist might try to come to the rescue, marking the distinction between the two human beings, not in virtue of any physical properties, but in virtue of their non-physical properties, viz., their souls. Now keep in mind that talk of souls rendering some X a human being presupposes the existence, in some identifiable, material substance category, of an X to which the soul is attached. The “X” in this case is the embryo – or, more technically, the ICM – so for the soul theorist’s case to be made (in Option (4)), the ICM must contain two wholly present human beings. And because souls have no spatial location, there should be no more worries about how two human beings could “fit” into the same spatial region at the exact same time. One embryo could house two distinct souls, rendering it two distinct human beings, both wholly present at that time. Now this answer is not a possibility for the Thomistic conception of souls, given that on that view souls are formal designs particularized in specific human bodies, so there can only be at most one soul per body. Imprinting two coin designs on one piece of metal still yields only one actual coin. But we have already ruled out the Thomistic conception as incoherent with respect to early embryos. The Augustinian conception, on the other hand, might very well advance this sort of possibility to avoid the worry under consideration, given that souls are not formal designs but are independently existing substantial entities. According to this view, then, human beings should be thought of as ordered pairs of bodies and souls, so that the ordered pair/human being {B1, S1} is distinct from the ordered pair/human being {B1, S2}, despite the fact that both human beings occupy precisely the same spatial region.

But while this explanation might account for the synchronic identity of pre-fission human beings, if it nevertheless maintains the three-dimensionalist account of the bodies involved in these ordered pairs it cannot explain the diachronic identity involved from pre- to post-fission. After all, what is the relation of B1 to the bodies post-fission? Call t1 the time just prior to fission, and t2 the time just after fission. At t1, there is one body, B1. But at t2, there are two bodies. Are these bodies both “brand new,” to be labeled B2 and B3, or is just one of them new, such that they should be labeled B1 and B2? If the former, then neither resulting ordered pair of bodies and souls ({B2, S1} and {B3, S2}, say) will be identical to either of the t1 ordered pairs. If the latter, then at least one of the resulting ordered pairs ({B2, S2}, say) will be a new human being, identical to neither of the original ordered pairs at t1. But the whole point of introducing the possibility of two souls in one body at t1 was to resolve the fission case by maintaining that (a) all human beings come into existence at the moment of conception, (b) two human beings could exist and be wholly present in one body pre-fission, and (c) those same two human beings would be the survivors of fission. But the articulation of what (b) would have to involve (on a coherent three-dimensionalist account of bodies) contradicts both (a) and (c).

A more promising option might then be to hold a four-dimensionalist view of the bodies involved, such that souls attach to temporal parts of bodies. What is wholly present at t1, then, would be two souls attached to a wholly present temporal part of two spacetime worm-bodies. The ordered pairs involved would thus be functions from temporal parts of distinct bodies to distinct souls, i.e., {B1t1, S1} and {B2t1, S2}, where B1 and B2 are spacetime worm-bodies whose temporal parts at t1 wholly overlap with one another. Articulating the matter in this way allows for the most plausible account of what happens to the bodies in the fission case (both spacetime worm-bodies share a temporal part pre-fission) while also allowing that (a) both body-worms could be ensouled from conception, and (b) the two post-fission body-stages would each be unified with the pre-fission body-stage as part of the same body (while not being unified with each other).

Nevertheless, while making this move renders the identity of the bodies involved utterly unproblematic, it raises a host of questions about the identity of the human beings involved. For example, do human beings (ensouled bodies) endure or perdure? On this account, the bodies involved perdure, while the souls involved endure, but how are we to make sense of what happens to the combination of the two? If human beings are truly ordered pairs of bodies and souls, then what precisely is wholly present at t1? There are only (temporal) parts of two bodies wholly present, but there are two wholly present souls. Set aside for now the problem of fission and consider an embryo at t1 that won’t twin, though. Combining bodies and souls under these competing ontologies in this simple case yields a straightforward dilemma resting on a logically exhaustive disjunction: human beings either endure or perdure. On the one hand, if human beings endure, then all of their parts must be wholly present at any given time. But on this view only the t1 temporal part of our human’s body is present at t1; its remaining parts have yet to occur. Thus not all of the human being’s parts are wholly present at t1, so it cannot endure. On the other hand, if human beings perdure, then what is wholly present at any given time must be only temporal parts of human beings. But on this view the soul renders the embryo housing it a human being, and because the soul is a simple substance it can have no parts whatsoever, including temporal parts, so at t1 what is wholly present is not just the temporal part of the embryo/body but the entire soul. Since the entire soul, and not merely a temporal part of it, is wholly present at t1, the human being involved cannot perdure. Ultimately, then, the view implies that human beings neither endure nor perdure. But if these are logically exhaustive possibilities, then the soul view (in this version) is incoherent.

Perhaps, then, as a last resort, the Augustinian soul theorist could simply abandon the ordered pair approach altogether and press the more radical view that the souls involved constitute the entirety of the human beings involved, i.e., the identity of human beings has nothing whatsoever to do with the identity of any of the bodies involved. This move would allow the soul theorist to avoid the incoherence associated with having competing ontologies for material and immaterial objects, while still allowing her to take the most plausible option in the twinning case: she can place two souls in the pre-fission embryo, have them be two wholly present human beings who endure across time, and then locate each soul in a different body post-fission. Thus if human beings are wholly spiritual, immaterial objects, then they are not bound by certain ontological constraints and identity conditions of the material objects in which they are housed.

Unfortunately, this move would undermine the very point of the soul theorist’s project altogether. If the identity conditions of human beings are wholly divorced from the identity conditions and ontological constraints of the bodies that house them – if human beings are not a function of bodies to souls – then human beings are not biological/material objects in any way. But if that is the case, then human beings cannot be killed, and it would be pointless to object to something like stem cell research on the grounds that it involves the death of human beings. Dismantling a house does not kill its occupant; it only renders him homeless.

Conclusion

I need to make explicit both what I have and have not shown here. I have tried to show that there is no way for either Thomistic or Augustinian soul theorists to maintain, in the light of fission and fusion cases, that embryos of the sort used in stem cell research are human beings without rather crippling implications. Thomistic advocates maintain a logically impossible position in light of the possibility of fusion, wherein humans die with no physical remains to be resurrected. On the other hand, Augustinian advocates, in offering the least theologically problematic response to fission, cannot put together a coherent ontological picture explaining the relation between bodies and souls unless they divorce souls from bodies altogether, which renders their overall moral conclusions groundless.

Now there may be some views on the nature of the soul that I have not considered and that could somehow avoid these difficulties. I readily concede this point. As I have noted elsewhere, the soul is a “slippery little sucker,” and its allegedly immaterial nature allows for any number of possibilities, each as equally plausible (or implausible) as the next.[xli] All I have tried to do is examine what I take to be the best, most worked-out conceptions and applications of the soul view, derived from Catholic scholarship. Is this then a straw man? If it is, then the outer layer of straw must mask concrete inside, for this view has been longstanding and very difficult to destroy. And while I certainly have not destroyed it myself, I believe I have revealed enough serious problems attached to it that its advocates should be very reluctant to present it as a freestanding objection to stem cell (and other early embryonic) research again.

Of course, the problems associated with the soul view with respect to fission and fusion are what have led many of the more reflective theological advocates to mark the point of ensoulment as occurring after the potential for twinning and such has ended, generally around the fourteenth day after conception when the "primitive streak" that will become the spinal cord is formed.[xlii] But this move implies that stem cell research, where the stem cells are derived from pre-implantation embryos between one and five days after fertilization, would be perfectly permissible. If the soul somehow determines/marks moral status, and an embryo is not ensouled until fourteen days after conception, then prior to that point there would be no soul, no entity with moral status, that would be destroyed via stem cell (and other embryonic) research, and therefore, once more, no good reason to object to it.[xliii] [xliv]

NOTES

-----------------------

[i] Quoted in Ted Peters, "Embryonic Stem Cells and the Theology of Dignity," in Suzanne Holland, Karen Lebacqz, and Laurie Zoloth, eds., The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), p. 129.

[ii] There may be some concern that my talk of ontological categories in this respect (according to which one such category might be that of “human beings”) is misleading, given that ontological categories are actually much more general in nature (e.g., categories of fact, property, particular, substance, etc.). On this more general terminology, “human being” would not constitute an ontological category; rather, it might be something that belongs to a particular ontological category. This is indeed true. What we are concerned with here is the “what is it?” question, the answer to which will place the particular under a substance category. So “human being” is, we shall assume, one type of substance category, with built-in specifications both for what that thing is and what its persistence conditions are across time, and our question will be whether or not fetuses or embryos fall under that subcategory. See, for example, Eric T. Olson, The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 28-29. Nevertheless, both for the sake of brevity and for the sake of keeping with the terminological tradition in the literature on abortion, I will continue to use the phrase “ontological status” as a gloss on this form of categorization.

[iii] See, e.g., Don Marquis, "Why Abortion is Immoral," The Journal of Philosophy 86(4) (April 1989), reprinted in Julie McDonald, ed., Contemporary Moral Issues in a Diverse Society (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1998), pp. 104-107; Jane English, "Abortion and the Concept of a Person," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 5 (October 1974): 233-243; and Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(1) (1971).

[iv] I should make it clear that I am not "fudging" questions of ontological and moral status, nor do I want to attribute such an equivocation to advocates of this argument. (See Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," in Susan Dwyer and Joel Feinberg, eds., The Problem of Abortion, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1997), pp. 65-66, for a succinct articulation of this well-known problem.) There are two distinct topics of potential exploration here: (a) what would make an entity a human being, a member of a particular category of the world (ontological status)? and (b) what is it about members of that category, if anything, that generates their deserving certain moral protections (moral status)? I am explicitly interested only in the former question in this paper. I certainly recognize that the two questions are often conflated, but I believe that we can, and that it is important to, deal with them separately here. See also note 10 below.

[v] See, for example, Erik Parens, "On the Ethics and Politics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research," in The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate, pp. 37-50.

[vi] I have borrowed much of this exposition from James A. Thomson's lucid "Human Embryonic Stem Cells," in ibid., pp. 15-17.

[vii] Ibid., p. 17. This exposition should make clear, then, that stem cells are not simply the cells of the embryo itself; they are rather cells ultimately derived from one part (the ICM) of a preimplantation embryo.

[viii] Ibid., p. 15.

[ix] Ibid., p. 16.

[x] Once again, this distinction is important. The soul, according to most theological views, serves two functions. First, because it is thought to be immortal, it serves to mark a fundamental ontological distinction between human beings and non-human creatures: only humans are immortal, and the soul is the vehicle for preserving identity between flesh-and-blood humans and their heavenly (or hellishly!) successors. In virtue of this function, it confers a special ontological status. But the soul also serves to confer moral status: it constitutes the source of dignity in a human being. So while one allegedly gets both ontological and moral status simultaneously, neither status is received in virtue of the other, i.e., one does not get moral status because one has a certain ontological status, or vice versa. In either case, one gets the particular status one has in virtue of one’s soul. In what follows, however, I will focus solely on the function of conferring ontological status served by the soul.

[xi] Introduction, Section 5, published by the Catholic Truth Society, London. Available on the web at . See also the more recent statement of The Third Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life held in Vatican City, 14-16 February, 1997 at .

[xii] Michael J. Coughlan, The Vatican, the Law and the Human Embryo (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990), p. 59.

[xiii] Thomas Shannon and Allan B. Woltor, “Reflections on the Moral Status of the Pre-Embryo,” Theological Studies 51 (1990), p. 620.

[xiv] See, e.g., Roderick M. Chisholm, "On the Simplicity of the Soul," Philosophical Perspectives, v. 5, Philosophy of Religion (1991): 167-181.

[xv] Coughlan, p. 72.

[xvi] And there have also been divisions into types of souls received at various stages. Aquinas, for instance, following Aristotle, distinguished between vegetative, animal, and rational souls, and this division also represented the ordered sequence in which these souls were "received" by developing humans. For a fascinating brief history of the Catholic Church's evolving position on embryos, fetuses, and souls, see H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., "The Ontology of Abortion," Ethics 84(3) (April, 1974): 217-234, esp., pp. 226-227.

[xvii] From the Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2002, a letter to the editor (by James Bjorseth): "Even the wisest among us must acknowledge that they are not qualified to answer the question of when life begins…. If we can't be sure then we must err on the side of caution and not terminate any existence." I have no doubts whatsoever that this writer means to include only human life under this principle, though. Cockroaches should still beware. See also Coughlan, Chapter 6.

[xviii] See, for one example, Parens, pp. 40-41. For an alternative perspective, see Francoise Baylis, "Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research: Comments on the NBAC Report," in The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate, pp. 51-60.

[xix] I am obviously drawing here from the sorts of arguments with respect to the grounds of public reason in a liberal democracy put forward by John Rawls, in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), esp. Lecture VI: "The Idea of Public Reason."

[xx] See, e.g., Engelhardt, p. 227; Lawrence C. Becker, "Human Being: The Boundaries of the Concept," Philosophy & Public Affairs 4(4) (Summer, 1975), p. 340, fn. 2; and Paul Bassen, "Present Sakes and Future Prospects: The Status of Early Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs 11(4) (Autumn, 1982), pp. 326-327. Two exceptions, however, are Coughlan, Chapter 5, and Ronald M. Green, The Human Embryo Research Debates: Bioethics in the Vortex of Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 31-32. While my approach in the early stages of my argument will be similar to these two, I eventually go far beyond them to discuss a number of other troublesome implications for the theological view.

[xxi] I should point out before beginning that some of the arguments I will advance are formally similar to those from familiar philosophical literature on abortion and embryonic research. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, for example, have offered arguments for the absurdity of claiming that a conceptus is a human being by drawing on the identity considerations involved in fission that I marshal below (see, e.g., “The Moral Status of the Embryo,” and “Individuals, Humans, and Persons: The Issue of Moral Status,” in Peter Singer, Unsanctifying Human Life, ed., Helga Kuhse (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Ltd., 2002)). Nevertheless, Kuhse and Singer (and others) typically start with materialist assumptions, and so their arguments are easily sidestepped by someone starting with immaterialist assumptions about souls, so I will be adapting the argumentative methodology they have employed specifically to this religion-based position, which will require several additional sorts of arguments from those seen before (with some exceptions; see previous footnote). In addition, the conclusions I will draw are very different from those Kuhse and Singer draw.

[xxii] It remains a wide-open question, though, just how these unity relations are provided, i.e., how an immaterial substance could possibly unify a material particular. I cannot begin to articulate a theological response to this version of the mind/body problem, so let us simply allow that it somehow does so and, to paraphrase Samuel Johnson, “there’s an end on’t” (James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), quoted in Gary Watson, “Introduction,” in Gary Watson, ed., Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 1).

[xxiii] I will distinguish and discuss two importantly different historical specifications of the nature of this relationship below.

[xxiv] And of course that embryo would also have conferred upon it from the moment of ensoulment the appropriate moral status.

[xxv] At the end of the paper I will actually entertain the possibility that souls just are human beings (independent from their collection of material cells) as a last-ditch effort to save the soul view, but I will nevertheless reject that view as well.

[xxvi] I will discuss a powerful objection to this move at the very end of the paper, but for now I will allow it to explore its many important implications.

[xxvii] For just two examples in which souls and twinning have explicitly been discussed, see Coughlan, pp. 71-74, and Green, pp. 31-32. For discussions of twinning used to undermine the materialist (non-soul-based) view that human beings come into existence at conception, see Kuhse and Singer, “Individuals, Humans, and Persons: The Issue of Moral Status,” esp. pp. 189-192.

[xxviii] See, for example, Coughlan, whose otherwise careful and balanced discussion of the Church and its position on the human embryo is too abrupt and one-sided when it comes to his discussion of souls and embryos. On pp. 72-73, he asks a number of seemingly devastating questions to the soul theorist which he makes no effort to answer on their behalf. I attempt to do so below.

[xxix] This is precisely the issue I will explore in detail in the last part of the paper, however.

[xxx] There is also a third problem, having to do with what kind of deaths would have taken place here, a problem I discuss below.

[xxxi] See Coughlan, p. 18.

[xxxii] Ibid., p. 19.

[xxxiii] Ibid., p. 17.

[xxxiv] Cf., Coughlan, p. 72.

[xxxv] One might maintain, however, that, perhaps in virtue of having been attached to an embryo with a particular complement of DNA for a bit, these souls might not be entirely indistinguishable after all. (I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for providing this possibility.) What matters for my purposes, however, are the intrinsic properties of the souls in question, and while the history of the soul’s attachments may constitute certain distinguishing extrinsic properties, there remains nothing about the souls in and of themselves at this stage that could render them distinguishable from one another. Furthermore, purely extrinsic properties like these could not possibly help establish the kind of moral status that I go on to discuss next.

[xxxvi] Cf., L. Nathan Oaklander, "Personal Identity, Immortality, and the Soul," Philo 4(2) (Fall-Winter 2001): 185-194.

[xxxvii] One might object to this characterization by suggesting that (a) perhaps these souls are united to a body in an afterlife (and in that way eventually acquire a personal identity), or (b) perhaps they acquire some sort of psychological life in the afterlife independently of embodiment. Option (a) would be a Thomistic reply; option (b) might be an Augustinian reply. In either case, though, the worry in the text remains: God would at this point be simply creating souls intended to exist and develop entirely in the afterlife. So again, what could the point possibly be? Of course, one might still ask why there has to be a point at all, but without one, we are once more left with an arbitrary God, a deity I presume that the Church certainly wants to avoid.

[xxxviii] For a lucid discussion of the rival ontologies, along with a compelling set of arguments in favor of four-dimensionalism, see Theodore Sider, Four Dimensionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

[xxxix] While it is obvious why a soul could not have any spatial parts, it may be less obvious why a soul could not have any temporal parts. Normally, of course, temporal parts are thought to exist, if they do at all, in spatiotemporal objects, which, if true, would immediately rule out souls (non-spatial objects) as having any temporal parts. Nevertheless, it seems in principle possible for there to be objects having no spatial location that still have temporal parts (see, e.g., Sider, p. 59). What exactly would this mean, though? The soul would have to have parts that exist only instantaneously (or perhaps over a more extended interval of instants) and be such that each one of those parts nevertheless wholly overlaps with everything that is a part of the soul at that instant (or interval). Now insofar as the soul is supposed to be a simple substance, it is also not supposed to be divisible at all, either into spatial parts or temporal parts like this. But why not? The restriction against spatial parts is obviously required by the soul’s immaterial nature. The restriction against temporal parts would have to follow, I believe, from two aspects of the temporal parts view that are problematic for immaterial substances. First, the notion of what it means for a temporal part to “overlap” at t with everything that is part of the soul at t is an idea of which it is exceedingly difficult to make sense with respect to immaterial substances. This is no problem, of course, with respect to material objects: for a temporal part of my mug to overlap at t with every part of the spacetime worm of my mug that exists at t, it just has to be the case that every particle of physical stuff making up the temporal part of the mug at t takes up the same space as everything that is part of the spacetime worm-mug at t. But if an object, like the soul, takes up no space to begin with, it is difficult to see how to specify what it would mean for its temporal part to overlap with anything. Second, if a soul were to have temporal parts, there would need to be a unifying principle connecting the various parts as one unified soul across time. But it is again difficult to imagine what that unifying principle – intrinsic to the soul-parts themselves – might consist in, if there were no material or even psychological elements constituting them. For these reasons (and there may well be others), it seems we have to read the “indivisibility” constraint on souls as meaning they have neither spatial nor temporal parts.

[xl] See, e.g., Sider, pp. 5-6. For his detailed treatment of attempted three-dimensionalist accounts of this case, see pp. 154-161.

[xli] See my “The Irrelevance/Incoherence of Non-Reductivism About Personal Identity,” Philo 5(2) (Fall-Winter 2002), p. 147. Or, as my former colleague Ron McIntyre puts it, one can always just “make up” some quality of the soul that can do the trick. True enough. On a brilliant episode of The Simpsons, Bart sells his soul to his friend Milhouse in exchange for five dollars. Prior to this exchange, Milhouse articulates his own theory of the nature of the soul by saying that it resides “kind of” in the chest area, and when you sneeze that’s your soul trying to escape. “Saying ‘God bless you!’ crams it back in.” And when you die, it squirms out and flies away. To Bart’s probing questions about what happens if you die at the bottom of the ocean, or what happens if you die in the middle of the desert, Milhouse glibly replies that the soul can swim, and it also has wheels so it can drive to the cemetery. After showing this hilarious episode to my students, I then ask, “And what makes Milhouse’s theory wrong?” Answer: nothing. It’s just as good a theory about the soul as anything else, precisely because of the soul’s allegedly immaterial nature (so perhaps Milhouse’s claims about its having wheels may need to be jettisoned, unless they’re special, immaterial wheels, of course).

[xlii] See Ernle W.D. Young, "Ethical Issues: A Secular Perspective," in The Human Embryonic Stem Cell Debate, p. 171.

[xliii] Actually, though, this view also falls prey to the objections relating to the featureless nature of the souls implanted even at this point, for embryos with newly-formed primitive streaks would still have no psychological capacities, which means any souls attached to them would be absent psychologies, and if they were to be spontaneously aborted at this point, they would still have no particularized, distinguishing, personal features.

[xliv] For extremely helpful comments and insights on earlier drafts of this paper, I am grateful to Eric Cave, Sean Foran, Josh Glasgow, Doug Portmore, and two anonymous referees for Social Theory and Practice. I am also grateful to audience members at the 2002 Mountain Plains Conference and colloquia at California State Universities Bakersfield and Northridge, where I tried out many of these ideas. Finally, I would like to thank the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, at California State University, Northridge, for providing me with reassigned time that reduced my teaching load in 2003 while I worked on this project.

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