1. The Pro-Life Argument from Substantial Identity: A Defence
2. J. Reiman. 1999.Abortion and the Ways We Value Human Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield: 79ff. My criticisms in that bookrespond to Lee's presentation of the substantial identity argument in P. Lee. 1996.Abortion and Unborn Human Life.Washington, DC: Catholic University Press: esp. 5-6.
3. In case it is not evident, Lee signals his allegiance to Aristotle's view of substance and essence at Lee,op. cit.note 1, p. 256. See, also, note 22, below.
4. Briefly put, the ground of my skepticism about this claim, and about Aristotelian metaphysics generally, is the following: Aristotle held that substances consist of form imposed on or realized in some matter. In living substances, the form is an active principle that accounts for their regular development. At first, the form exists as potential and, in time, it is actualized. Since form is equivalent to essence, this implies that living substances have an unchanging essential nature throughout their existence. However, the theory also implies that matter itself is formless, and thus that matter as such has no essence. By contrast, a crucial feature of modern physics from the seventeenth century on is that matter has its own essence - extension (a la Descartes) or solidity (a la Locke) - without needing any addition of form. This - conjoined with the modern version of atomic theory, namely, that all objects are configurations of some set of basic particles (a view rejected by Aristotle in its ancient version) - leads to the idea that the only things in nature that can correspond to Aristotelian substances are the most basic particles of matter, of which all other things are combinations. Only the most basic particles of matter (assuming there are such) have an unchanging essential nature throughout all their combinations. The properties of living things - such as human beings - with which we are here concerned are then accidents of those combinations, and there is no implication that such living things will have an unchanging essential nature throughout their existence. There remain, of course, what Locke called ?nominal essences?, namely the properties that we take to define an entity. These have to do with how we carve up reality, not necessarily how it is carved up itself. That does not mean that nominal essences are arbitrary. They must fit our experience and be appropriate in light of our theories, scientific and moral.
5. Essential Properties and the Right to Life: A Response to Lee