Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics

Lee and George have set forth a sophisticated refutation of the philosophical idea called "body-self dualism". At the heart of this philosophy is the view that humans persons are not deserving of moral respect in virtue of being whole, living, bodily human organisms, but in virtue of some quality which they develop over time, usually consciousness. It follows that human persons are something other than their bodies (not more than their bodies, but other than their bodies), that consciousness is personal but living bodies without consciousness are subpersonal. It further follows that those who are not yet conscious (e.g., embryos and fetuses), and those who have irretrievably lost consciousness (e.g., those in irreversible commas) are not persons and therefore may be treated instrumentally and even killed for the good of others. This reasoning underlies justifications for euthanasia, abortion and embryo destructive experimentation. Lee and George set forth a basic argument in defense of the view that bodily (biological) life is an essential and intrinsic aspect of persons. They entertain extensive objections against this view. And then they put the view to work in relation to several contemporary controversial moral issues: hedonism and hedonistic drug taking, abortion, euthanasia and issues in sexual ethics. The basic argument goes like this: sensation is a bodily act of a living being; therefore the agent that senses is a bodily entity, an animal; but in humans, the agent who senses also reasons and has self-awareness; therefore the agent who reasons and has self-awareness is a bodily entity, not a spiritual entity making use of the body as an extrinsic instrument. Having established the animality of human beings, Lee and George in chapter two argue that human are nevertheless unique kinds of animals, animals with a radical difference from all other bodily beings, which requires that they be treated radically different from the way all other animals are treated. They argue, in other words, that the animal organism that constitutes the human being is a "person". And that the personhood claim is fully compatible with the animalist claim. This of course takes careful argument, which Lee and George execute masterfully. Their `human organisms are human persons' argument has obvious and profound implications. For example, in chapter four it is used to address the issue of abortion. It leads to the conclusion that human embryos and fetuses are complete, though immature, human beings. But since human beings are human persons, embryos and fetuses are human persons. Since humans are deserving of full moral respect in virtue of being persons (i.e., in virtue of that which separates them from other animals), embryos and fetuses are deserving of full moral respect. Similarly, in chapter five, treating euthanasia, they argue that since human beings remain persons throughout their entire duration as animal organisms (