I
In the High Middle Ages, esse was routinely distinguished from ens. While the latter refers to a being, the former concerns the "to-be-ness" of that being. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) famously argued that God is wholly esse, and that all things that are share esse with God. An ens is a determinate limitation of pure esse. Accordingly, to be at all is to have some of what God wholly is. Aquinas further claimed that God's essence is God's esse.
Duns Scotus (1265-1308) did away with Thomas' Neo-Platonic-inspired understanding that individual things participate in esse which God wholly is. Accordingly. being became for Scotus simply the most general and abstract of concepts applicable to both the finite and the infinite. Any possible thing either is or is not.
While this spelled an end to the "degrees of being" model of the earlier tradition, Scotus was, like his predecessors, very interested in being, particularly the "thisness" of things in comparison to their "whatness." For Scotus, haeccitas is the primoridal thisness of a thing that is not deducible from a thing's quidditas or whatness. While every ens participates in esse for Thomas, Scotus' haeccitas is logically irreducible to quidditas. God grants and values the particularity of being. Particular things have particular essences. Over and against Thomas, the divine essence does not entail existence.
The separation between thatness and whatness was enshrined by Kant (1724-1804) in his critique of the ontological argument. The ontological argument, classically stated by Anselm (1089-1152), had argued that since God is that which none greater can be thought, God must exist because it is greater to exist than not to exist. Accordingly, the conceivability of God entails the existence of God. Famously, Anselm had offered a second argument claiming that since God is that which none greater can be thought, God must necessarily exist because it is greater to exist necessarily than merely to exist contingently.
Kant, though likely not reading Anselm, would have none of this reasoning, for while one can derive three-sidedness from the concept of a triangle, one cannot derive existence from the concept of God. Why? The reason is that although the concept of God's perfection might include the concept of God's existence, God's actual existence is a different matter entirely. The concept of an existing God does not an actual existing God make. One must distinguish the instantiation of any concept from the concept itself. If one allows existence to be a predicate, then one is stuck with saying, "there is an x, such that x does not exist." But this is nonsense. Accordingly, no amount of determining what, can issue in an actually existing that.
Once upon a time the western tradition widely accepted Augustine's (354-430) notion of creatio ex nihilo, the claim that creation itself emerges from nothing. It knew that no amount of moving the deck furniture around upon the ship of existence could produce through that moving a newly existing ship. A causally efficacious God was needed to create and sustain the universe. A divine being with efficient causality was necessary in order for there to be created things. Being is not merely an inversion or unexplored side of nonbeing, but rather stands out from being on the basis of divine fiat. Existence is not a move in the unfolding of the Absolute Idea.
Lamentably, the West has been busy forgetting this insight. Human beings, we are told, are co-creators with God. We envision, construct, paint, compose, and otherwise bring new things out of old, believing that God also engaged in ordering the chaos. We forget the old ways because we have forgotten what Heidegger (1889-1976) called the fundamental question of being: "Why is there something and not nothing at all?" We dream of quantum cosmology where a multiverse contains all possible ways that the universe might go, including the actual way it went, and thus we attempt to make less jarring the fact of the existence of the universe by pointing to the essential structure of that from which existence flows. But we lose the point of Heidegger's question, for why does the multiverse, which grounds every trajectory of existence, itself exist? Why is this something there and not merely nothing?
Our modern logic presupposes the distinction between that and what. We express the what of anything through monadic and polyadic predicates which take as their values names for existing entities. We might say, for instance, that the whatness of the subatomic world is found in the spins, charges, and mass that particular entities possess. But theories of particle physics are accordingly committed to the existence of those entities that the fundamental theories of particle physics quantify over. Quine's (1908-2000) famous quip applies clearly here: "To be is to be a value of a bound variable." The value of the bound variable is the that which exists, and the properties and relations that the that which exists sustains constitutes the what of the properties and relations exhibited. The early Wittgenstein (1889-1951) taught us that we cannot reason from the fact that something exists with determinate properties, to the existence of some other existing thing. After all, following Kant, existence is not a predicate.
The rejection of the ontological argument and the acceptance of the gap between essence and existence is standard fare in philosophy. So how then are these insights forgotten in a small region of a subdomain within philosophy, the ethics of abortion? Why is it the case here that certain arguments seem to forget the incommensurability of existence and essence, and accordingly assert that the existence or nonexistence of something can justifiably be derived from the particular way other things are?
II
Arguments about the permissibility or nonpermissability of abortion sometimes suffer from a loss of precision between the what and the that of a thing. In what follows I want to be precise in exploring the structure of common consequentialist arguments allowing abortion. I shall here not try to prove abortion is always wrong, or even determine under what conditions abortion might be permissible. I am only concerned with arguments that regard the existence or nonexistence of the fetus/baby as derivable from a description of the happiness of agents within the wider context in which that fetus/baby is ingredient. In simple language, I am interested in exploring arguments that claim that "the baby would be better off not existing than be likely existing in a situation like this."
Imagine female f and partner p who decide that it is morally justified to terminate f's fetus/baby b because of the likely liabilities that f, p and b would suffer were b to exist. Let us assume, for instance, that f is living in poverty, that f's relationship with p is unstable, that f already has three young children, and that f will like descend into substance abuse to mitigate the tensions in her life. One might, given this scenario, simply do the calculation about what the likely collective utility or disutility be to f, p, and b would be were b to exist or, alternatively, were b not to exist. Included in this utilitarian calculation might be the putative rights f has for self-determination, and how carrying and delivering b might intrude on the exercise of these rights. Arguments like this, while structured as purely consequentialist in nature, might thus include an element of deontology, as suggested by f having rights. In what follows, however, I am interested only in the consequentialist argument.
The question before us is this: Can a description of the what of f, p, and b's pleasure or happiness entail either that b should exist or should not exist? More to the point, should the calculation of f, p, and b's total possible happiness on b existing or b not existing justifiably affect the existence of b at all?
There are perhaps reasons to say it should. After all, don't we often argue from the whatness of an organism's physical condition to a determination to end the thatness of an invading virus, bacteria, or parasite? The bacteria s exists and this eventuates in the suffering of the agent a in whom the bacteria is operating, and the family of friends of that agent. Is not the existence of fetus/baby b analogous to the existence of parasite s?
Perhaps we are in need of a functionality argument here. While having baby b is within the proper function of agent f, the having of lethal parasite s is not within the proper function of agent a. While the natural organism a has its function optimized in not having s, it is arguable that f's function is optimized by not terminating b. To see what is the proper function of a thing it is necessary to know the nature of that thing.
It is clearly the case that some no longer would regard birthing b as part of the nature of f. They might say that b is no more determined to come about given f as s is determined to come about given a. Accordingly, there is no natural tie between f and b.
But it is difficult to claim that there is no natural tie between f and b when f is clearly the sine qua non of b occurring. Clearly, if b, there must be f, and without f there can be no b. (I am going to avoid for now the question of b being produced in a laboratory.) Functionality arguments will likely generate controversy, and I will not attempt to develop a fully defensible one here. I avert to them only because I am cognizant that some way must be found to argue for the preciousness of b existing and not s or myriad other things not existing
So let us assume for purposes of this paper that we can disarm arguments that make s like b with respect to a and f, and simply look at calculating the goodness of b's existence given the possible scenarios for f and p on both b and ~b. How would such a calculation work? How could one assign a value to the existence of b or nonexistence of b given that the happiness or pleasure of f, p and b is incommensurate with the existence of b? What I am suggesting is that since there is no rule or recipe tracking from whatness to thatness, there can be no rule or recipe from a description of likely or unlikely consequences of having b to the actual existence of b. While it might be possible at the conceptual level to think that b should or should not exist given the pleasure or happiness of f, p, and b, the actual instantiation of b is as logically disconnected from f, p, and b, as the actual instantiation of God is from a consideration of God's putatively perfect attributes. When it comes to denying the ontological argument, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Many more considerations can be added to this argument suggesting that b has a fundamental right to exist, but I am not adding them here. I am merely claiming that one cannot derive that it is morally permissible to terminate b's existence on the basis of the happiness of f, p, and b. In fact, the ease by which some would reason to the morally permissible of terminating b given the likely happiness of f, p, and b, might remind one of the Dasein ohne Leben reasoning of certain German doctors in the 1930s. They reasoned that the life of a person might be at such a low level of development and thus happiness, that it is morally permissible to end the fact of that person's existence to save him/her (and their families) from what that existence might likely be. Dasein ohne Leben thus assumes that existence (or non-existence) can somehow be derived from essence. If existence is not a predicate, that is, if existence is not a property of a being, then there is no way to argue to it (or away from it) by considering the relational and non-relational properties of that being.
III
Mary is considering terminating her pregnancy because the total amount of happiness for her, her family, and her fetus/baby will likely increase were she to terminate. She reasons to this in facile ways widely accepted by our culture. Clearly, the fetus/baby is at the stage where its immediate happiness or unhappiness is not a profoundly relevant consideration in comparison with Mary's own happiness, her partner's happiness and the happiness of her family. She aborts the fetus/baby on strictly utilitarian grounds, seemingly including the happiness of the fetus/baby in the calculation. How does what we have discussed concern Mary's concrete decision?
I am saying that consequentialism must respect the distinction between the whatness and thatness of the beings which it is considering. The consequences of events concern the existence or non-existence of properties instanced by the beings impacted by the event. Accordingly, the consequences of Mary's abortion concern which properties Mary, her partner, her family and the fetus/baby instantiate. One reasons here from whatness to whatness. The happiness, pleasure, and total human flourishing of all engaged may indeed increase on the termination of the pregnancy. What I am arguing, however, is that no amount of consideration of whatness can entail that any of the morally relevant beings not exist. The fact of existence is of a different order entirely than the how or what of existence. One cannot derive a that from a what.
This is not to say, however, that consequentialism should not be employed when comparing the that of the mother's life with the that of the life of the fetus/baby. Here considerations of the what of both mother and fetus/baby are relevant. What-talk can be helpful when comparing one that with another. It may well be that the consequences of not-aborting are decidedly worse for the mother facing possible death in delivery than for the fetus/baby. After all, the mother is conscious in a way that the fetus/baby is not. In addition, the mother has other children; she has a family who have known her for decades and love her. Given the choice between the existence of the mother or fetus/baby, one could likely construct consequentialist arguments showing that it better to abort than not abort. I am not, however, claiming this here. I am only pointing out that while consequentialist arguments might be helpful in the adjudication between two or more thats, they nonetheless fail when comparing whats and thats.
But what about rape or incest? Does not the distinction between that and what mean that a fetus/baby can never be justifiably aborted? I am not claiming this here. What I am arguing is that a consequentialist argument cannot legitimately be employed to derive the justifiable non-existence of the fetus/baby from considerations of the happiness of the mother and her family and friends. This does not mean the deontological considerations are not ethically relevant. Not everything in complicated issues of abortion can be decided on the basis of consequentialist thinking. What I have argued is only that for a certain class of moral judgments based upon the likely consequences of aborting the baby/fetus for the happiness of the mother and her family/friends, it is unjustified to move from the what of their happiness to the that of the fetus/baby's existence.
Clearly, a full defense of this view demands that one can distinguish degrees of goodness with respect to the thatness of a person, fetus/baby, pet, cricket, tree or mountain. While the that cannot be directly derived from the what, our moral reasoning oftentimes is concerned with questions about whether or not something justifiably should exist given the consequences of its likely existence. But considerations of degrees of goodness or rightness cannot be themselves based upon consequentialist reasoning. Here we have entered the province of deontology. My argument here is simply that consequentialist reasoning cannot justifiably conclude to the existence or non-existence of fetus/baby b based upon sum total of happiness of agents f, p, and b.
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