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Why the embryo rescue case is a bad argument against embryonic personhood
1Purdue University Department of Philosophy Ringgold standard institution, West Lafayette, IN, United States.
Abstract:
The embryo rescue case (ERC) is a thought experiment that is used to argue against the view that embryos have a right to life (i.e., are persons). I will argue that cognitive science undermines the intuition elicited by the ERC. I will show that whether or not embryos have a right to life, our mental tools will make it very difficult to believe that they do have the said right. This suggests that the intuition elicited by the ERC is not truth-indicative. The upshot of this is that we have an undercutting defeater for our intuition that embryos do not have a right to life. Thus, the ERC is a bad argument against embryonic personhood.
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