Analysis Of The Argument Of Potentiality

The position of potentiality is an argument held to defend the morality of a fetus. People who defend the argument of potentiality usually hold to the belief that the beginning of a moral life happens at conception. Potentiality is the argument that whatever abilities or characteristics and adult has, they have them by the development of what he already possessed from the outset. It is claimed that what one can become is a possibility based on what one is. Becoming is based first and foremost on being (Iglesias, 1990); that is, the fetus has the potential to become what it is already programmed to be. Therefore the morality of it’s life should be protected in the same way an adult’s life would be protected. The second argument for moral life …show more content…
Someone who holds the view of potentiality would say that a fetus who is not yet capable of to have an opinion about it’s own life is still of worth because of what it will become. However Tooley says that “we mistakenly attribute to the baby an interest in continued existence because we wrongly identify the baby with the adult person she becomes” (Tooley, 1985). He gives an explanation that makes sense to me, yet he denies it. He says that it is an an adult’s interest, who he names Mary, that she were not destroyed as a fetus, therefore it must have been in the fetus’ interest to not be destroyed because fetus Mary is just adult Mary at a young age (Tooley, 1985). As much as this makes sense to me, he says that this can only be supported by their being psychological connections between the adult and baby. He denies that there are because the adult has full consciousness and a fetus does not. Therefore, Mary’s interest not be destroyed cannot be transferred to the fetus she once was because the fetus did not have the capability to form that