More on Potentiality and Possibilia:

A Response to Stone

Aleksandar Jokic

In his brief note “Potentiality and Possibilia: A Reply to Jokic,”1 Jim

Stone reacts to my article “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,”2 which is, in
part, a response to his essay “Why Potentiality Matters,”3 by alleging that I
have committed the fallacy of converse accident. As I did not base my judg-
ment that fetal rights cannot be grounded on the fetus’s potential to become
an (adult) human person on any inference, let alone a fallacious one, allow
me to comment.
In this paper I respond to Stone in two ways. First, I will discuss his
construal of my position, and I will show that in arguing against it he com-
mits the straw man fallacy. Second, I will explore the overall position on
potentiality and the possibility of having rights that emerges from his criti-
cism of my views. It will turn out that his reply, for whatever it’s worth,
commits him to a counterintuitive position on potentiality and possible pos-
session of rights. It takes him right down the slippery slope to the absurd
view that even ova and spermatozoa (as long as they exist) must be granted
rights. But before I can get to Stone’s criticism I must first in some detail
restate my view on fetal rights. Hence, I divide this paper into two parts.

In order to understand why my claim that potentiality cannot matter

was not based on an inference, we have to take a somewhat detailed look at
the method I employed in solving the ‘puzzling case’ of fetal rights.4 The
method is inspired by a procedure pursued by Joel Feinberg, in his attempt
to deal with a variety of puzzling cases,5 and it requires first, that we exam-
ine the most salient characteristics of those entities to which the ascription of
rights is most familiar and unproblematic, and second, that we examine
cases of objects that clearly cannot be rights bearers. Depending on whether
we are more impressed with the similarities or the differences between a
puzzling case (in this event the fetus) and appropriate instances of clear
cases (clear rights bearers and objects that clearly lack rights), we shall
decide whether objects in a given borderline case have rights.6 This
Feinbergian method clearly calls for a judgment (which depends on the
impressions relevant comparisons make upon us), and not an inference.7
A few more words about the details of this method and how it was
applied to the fetus are in order, before I can turn to my response to Stone.
The method I have offered appears particularly appropriate once we realize

JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 32 No. 2, Summer 2001, 224–231.

© 2001 Blackwell Publishers
 Potentiality and Possibilia 225

that the answer to the question, “What sorts of beings can have rights?” has
the following form:

(A) There is some nonmoral property (or set of properties), Q, such that
for any object x, x has some (unspecified) right, R, if, and only if, x has
Q.8

In applying the Feinbergian method to the case of the fetus, and keeping
in mind the form the answer will take, spelled out in (A), we need not worry
about all logically possible interpretations of Q, but only about properties
that are plausible candidates to play the role of the justifying reason for
attributing rights to (all) possible possessors of rights. The list of popular
candidates I offered in the article was labeled “Q1“:

(a1) “. . . is capable of having needs . . .,” (b1) “. . . is capable of having

interests,” (c1) “. . . is capable of feeling pain,” (d1) “. . . is capable of act-
ing on the basis of reasons,” (e1) “belongs to the species Homo Sapiens.”9

My method does not require that we first determine the correct interpre-
tation of Q;10 it can be applied regardless of what Q turns out to be (if this is
ever successfully determined). All we need to do is to find appropriate clear
cases. Normal adult human beings are examples of objects that clearly have
rights.11 Merely possible individuals—that is, objects that might have
existed but never do—are the paradigm of objects that clearly cannot have
rights. To illustrate this, I used Nathan Salmon’s example of “Noman,” the
individual who would have resulted if a particular sperm and egg had
united that, in fact, never do.12 As such objects cannot have rights, they do
not have any properties from the list Q1, and they cannot have the property
Q that is such that if x has Q, then x has rights. For every property from the
list Q1, however, there can be constructed a corresponding property that
objects such as Noman do have. This yields a list I labeled “Q3“: (a3) “. . .
would have been capable of having needs . . .,” (b3) “. . . would have had
interests,” (c3) “. . . would have been capable of feeling pain,” and so on.
To see how this method works let us look at an example of the general
question “Can x have rights?” Let x be future individuals. In order to
answer the question “Can future individuals have (present) rights?” using
the proposed method, we would have to find appropriate properties that
can be attributed to future individuals and that then can be compared to the
properties from the lists Q1 and Q3 in order to determine if they are more
like the former or the latter. The list of appropriate properties can be labeled
“Q2“: (a2) “. . . will be capable of having needs . . .,” (b2) “. . . will have inter-
ests,” (c2) “. . . will be capable of feeling pain,” and so on.13 This means that
our question is really this: Are Q2-type-properties more like Q1- or
Q3-type-properties? Elsewhere I have argued not only that it is legitimate to
ascribe rights on the basis of Q2-type-properties (i.e., to future individuals as
characteristic examples of objects that have such properties), but that in
some cases of actual objects, those properties are the sole basis for otherwise
unproblematic ascriptions of rights to those objects.14
226 Aleksandar Jokic

This result may become more transparent by means of the following

diagram:

Q1——————————Q2——————————-Q3 (D1)

Since Q2-type-properties are halfway between the so-called clear-cut cases,

in order to determine whether they can play the role of the properties that
ground rights or are instead in this respect more like Q3-type-properties, an
argument, or some other maneuver, is needed. And I have offered an argu-
ment that shows that Q2-type-properties can ground rights in actual objects,
so why can’t present rights of future individuals be so grounded?
Turning to the case of the fetus I must first draw attention to a distinc-
tion that should be kept in mind between two approaches to the question of
fetal rights. The first, which I call the “Catholic Church approach (CCA),”
states that the fetus, from the beginning, has the required property Q that is
such that it serves as the justifying reason for attributing rights to normal
human adults. The second takes it that the fetal claim to rights stands or fails
with its potential. This doctrine I call potentialism, and I was interested only
in exposing its metaphysical flaws. About the former I had nothing to say. It
is important to keep this in mind since, as we shall see, Stone attributes to
me a claim that can only be classified as a version of the first approach,
which I had explicitly set aside.
I had reached my judgment that the fetus cannot qualify to be consid-
ered a possible possessor of rights, based on its potential to become a nor-
mal human adult, by applying to it the proposed amended Feinbergian
method. This meant that I had to compare, on the one hand, the Q1 proper-
ties of normal human adults (as clear cases of rights bearers), and, on the
other, the Q3 (dispositional) properties of merely possible individuals (as
clear cases of objects without rights) with the appropriate property of the
fetus. What is, then, this appropriate property of the fetus? Given that my
concern was only with potentialism (that is, CCA was entirely left out of
consideration), the answer is obvious: the actual property of the fetus that it
is potentially a normal human being. Hence, the question to be decided is
then whether this property, which I labeled a Qp-property, was more like
Q1- or Q3-type-properties. There is no intuitive way to undertake these com-
parisons, however, until an analysis of the concept of potentiality is offered.
We don’t know how to do the comparisons unless we are clear on what “x is
potentially Q” exactly involves. I offered an analysis of the concept of poten-
tiality in terms of possibility and quantification over future times.15 The
result of this analysis is that “x is potentially Q” is to be understood in the
following way:

Either there will be a (human adult) y such that y has Q and is identical
to x, or it is merely possible that there will be a (human adult) y such
that y has Q and is identical to x, i.e., there will be no object y such that y
has Q and is identical to x, but there might have been such a y (in the
actual world).16
 Potentiality and Possibilia 227

About this analysis I have stated that “the concept of potentiality, offers
a picture of the property Qp as a compound, disjunctive property. The two
constituent parts of the disjunction have different ontological commitments:
one disjunct of a Qp-property, predicated of some object x, purports to be
about some object with the relevant property Q which will exist in the actual
world and is identical to x, i.e., a future object which is identical to x, while
the other disjunct purports to be about an object identical to x which is only
merely possible (never exists in the future in the actual world although it
might have existed, and would have had the property Q).”17 About the
Qp-property, understood in this way, I state that it can be compared to
Q1- and Q3-type-properties. I then stated my intuition that this disjunctive
property of the fetus is clearly insufficient to justify ascription of rights to
the fetus. This intuition could be represented by means of the following
diagram:

Q1———————————Q2——————Qp————Q3 (D2)
This intuition, thus represented,18 can be expressed by saying that
the disjunctive property in question is halfway between Q 2 - and
Q3-type-properties (being a disjunction of precisely such properties), and,
thus, “excessively ‘far’ from Q1-properties and excessively ‘close’ to
Q3-properties to justify ascription of rights to the fetus.”19 This is the extent
of my argument that the fetus cannot be regarded as a possible possessor of
rights. It should be completely obvious that it is not based on some dubious
inference, it is entirely based on an intuition regarding what the Qp property
is more like. Of course, intuitions are not the most reliable building blocks of
any account, and I am quite aware that an opposite intuition is possible. For
this reason, the last part of “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter” is devoted to
showing that the source of this competing intuition is a sort of conceptual
confusion, and I accuse Stone and other potentialists of falling prey to this
confusion.20

II

Let us turn now to Stone’s criticism of my position on fetal rights.

Recalling the role of the example of Noman as my choice of the kind of enti-
ties that cannot possibly have rights, Stone’s criticisms are entirely based on
the following quote from “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter”:

The reason why rights cannot be attributed to . . . Noman is that the

very notion of acting in such a way as to harm Noman is defective. It is
simply incorrect to talk about Noman’s right to be protected from
harmful behavior by others, since such a behavior is impossible. There
is nothing we are able to do to Noman that would be either right or
wrong, for no matter what we do, it will not count as doing anything to
Noman and others of his (its) kind. . . . What this implies is that no mat-
ter how similar the Q3-properties may be to Q1-properties, they do not
represent the right kind of ground for attributing rights to objects. This,
228 Aleksandar Jokic

furthermore, implies that the property Q required for attributing rights

to human adults, as clear instances of right-holders, cannot be some
dispositional property of the sort found on the list Q3.

Before I examine Stone’s objections to my views on fetal rights two facts

about this passage must be emphasized. First, it comes from section I of my
paper, entitled “The Method,” the only purpose of which was to propose a
way to approach the issue of fetal rights, and second, it contains no claim
regarding fetal rights; that comes much later, in section III, entitled “Potenti-
ality and Fetal Rights.”
Stone believes that he can establish that in this passage I have failed
“to show that potentiality cannot matter.”21 And I would agree, since this
wasn’t the purpose of this passage anyway. What is bothering Stone in this
passage? He holds that the move by which I thought I had determined that
the property Q, whatever it is, which is such that it confers rights to us
normal adults, cannot simply be some dispositional Q3-type-property, is in
fact an instance of the fallacy of converse accident, because there is nothing
in the passage that shows that Q3-type-properties, when conjoined with
some other properties, in particular the property of existence, cannot
ground rights. I agree with Stone again. But this is irrelevant for two
reasons. First, I was simply making a point that Q3-type-properties by them-
selves are insufficient to ground rights, and second, and this is more impor-
tant, that a proposal that perhaps the complex conjunctive property
consisting of the property of existence22 and an adequate dispositional prop-
erty (such as “. . . would have had interests”) might be all that’s needed (i.e.,
the property Q itself) to ground rights is obviously a wrong kind of proposal
to have interested me, since it has nothing to do with potentiality. This pro-
posal is of CCA variety, and an obviously mistaken one for that matter. The
fact that Stone thinks that I should have shown that this sort of view is false
proves that he does not appreciate the obvious counterintuitiveness of the
view that anything that existed and had appropriate dispositional proper-
ties (such as ova and spermatozoa) would also have rights. There is no need,
I submit, to show that this view is wrong: it is obviously wrong (and, more-
over, not a version of potentialism).
Stone attributes to me, as my chief contention, the claim “that
dispositional properties cannot ground rights in existents,”23 and this is the
thesis he claims to have refuted. In fact, I make no such claim in setting up
my method, let alone do I regard some such claim as my “crucial conten-
tion.”24 (If anything is my crucial contention, it is the claim that the method I
proposed can provide us with a clear reason why the fetus isn’t a possible
possessor of rights.) Perhaps Stone thinks I made such a claim because I said
that Q3-properties alone cannot be the right account of the rights-grounding
property Q. And this is a very different claim: even if Q were just some
dispositional property (without anything else, such as the property of exis-
tence or even if conjoined with any Q1-type-property) there would be no role
for potentiality to play (since potentiality, as we discovered, yields the pecu-
liar disjunctive properties). We would be discussing a view of fetal rights
that in no way depends on the potential of the fetus to become a (normal)
 Potentiality and Possibilia 229

human adult; we would instead be dealing with a view according to which

the rights-grounding dispositional property applies from conception
on—and even before!
Stone also objects to my choice of paradigmatic examples of objects that
cannot have rights, the merely possible individuals, and this is his only
comment on the method I had proposed. He calls merely possible individu-
als “queer entities [that] make unhelpful moral paradigms.”25 He suggests
that a “far better paradigm of something that clearly lacks rights is a rock or
a clump of earth.” There are two reasons why this is not so. First, I needed
clear-cut examples of things that under no description could motivate rights
claims (nor even claims to any special treatment that might be confused for
rights). I agree that rocks and clumps of earth belong to a category of entities
of which rights cannot be meaningfully predicated. But, as Feinberg
noticed, this “is not to say that there are no circumstances in which we
ought to treat rocks carefully, but only that the rocks themselves cannot
validly claim good treatment from us.”26 I wanted to avoid even this, and
my example of merely possible individuals satisfies this demand. There is a
second, and more important, reason that has to do with another feature of
the overall proposed method for solving puzzling cases that was perhaps
not emphasized enough in my original article. The method, in the final anal-
ysis, calls for a judgment based on the intuition regarding the similarities
and differences between a borderline case and appropriately chosen para-
digmatic cases that can help establish a clear intuition. These comparisons
can be made only through the examinations of the properties of the relevant
cases. Part of these examinations involves what I have called the process of
“refining the question” that calls for comparisons. What this means, in the
case of the fetus, is that the initial question, “Are Qp-properties more like Q1-
or Q3-type-properties?” has no straightforward intuitive answer. This ques-
tion must be further refined in such a way that the comparison required by
the methodology is possible. This refinement can be achieved only after an
analysis of the concept of potentiality. After undertaking this analysis we
saw that our concept of potentiality is such that concepts of a future object
and a merely possible (future) object come packaged in it, making the
Qp-property a complex disjunctive property. Our intuition in attending the
initial question, “Are Qp-properties more like Q1- or Q3-type-properties?” is
aided immensely by choosing merely possible individuals as paradigmatic
examples of objects without rights. We see at once that Qp-properties are
more like Q3- than Q1-type-properties. Choosing rocks instead, as our para-
digmatic objects without rights, would not help the process of refining our
initial question and would not get us in the position to have a clear intuition
and judgment regarding the relevant similarities, nor would it enable us to
find weaknesses in the opposite intuition that one might have.
In conclusion, Stone’s criticism fails to show why we should think that
Qp-properties are more like Q1- than Q3-type-properties. And I have argued
that this is a metaphysically flawed position to take.27
230 Aleksandar Jokic

Notes
1
Jim Stone, “Potentiality and Possibilia: A Reply to Jokic,” Journal of Social Philosophy 26,
no. 3 (Winter 1995):139–41.
2
Aleksandar Jokic, “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,” Journal of Social Philosophy 21, no.
3 (Winter 1993):177–93.
3
Jim Stone, “Why Potentiality Matters,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17, no. 4 (Decem-
ber 1987):815–30. Stone says that my article, referred to in note 2, is “largely a
response” to this essay of his; I would say that it is so only in part.
4
This method is explored in detail in part I of my essay, entitled “The Method.” Cf. Jokic,
“Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,” 178–82. By a ‘puzzling case’ I mean all those
instances when the question “Is x a possible possessor of rights?” does not have a
clear and straightforward answer. The proposed method was explicitly introduced
as appropriate only in the cases of the fetus, future individuals, and dead persons.
5
Joel Feinberg, “The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations,” Rights, Justice, and the
Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).
6
I have applied the same method to the puzzling case of future individuals in my “Ethics
and Ontology: Present Rights of Future Individuals and Property Instantiation,”
Journal of Philosophical Research 24 (1999), 473–86.
7
This judgment isn’t arbitrary, however. It is achieved through a process of refining the
question(s) involving the request for appropriate comparisons up to a point when an
appeal to intuition seems least controversial in deciding how to align entities from a
given puzzling group with respect to their possible possession of rights. About this
more later.
8
Jokic, “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,” 179.
9
Ibid., 180.
10
As long as we are dealing with the view that the fetus is a possible possessor of rights
because it is a potential person, the view I call potentialism.
11
To quote Feinberg on this: “Normal human beings . . . are obviously the sorts of beings
of whom rights can meaningfully be predicated. Everyone would agree to that, even
extreme misanthropes who deny that anyone in fact has rights.” Feinberg, “Rights of
Animals and Unborn Generations,” 160.
12
Nathan Salmon, “Existence,” in Philosophical Perspectives I: Metaphysics, ed. J. Tomberlin
(Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview, 1987), 92.
13
In“Ethics and Ontology,” I argue that apparent ontological problems with the attribu-
tion of present properties to future individuals can be overcome.
14
Ibid.
15
For the details of this analysis see Jokic, “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,” 182–86.
16
Ibid., 185.
17
Ibid., 185–86.
18
Let me emphasize here that my intuition here is not based on diagram D2; rather, it is
the diagram’s function to help express it better.
19
Ibid., 187
20
In a nutshell I accuse potentialists of confusing the following two questions:
1. Is the fetus that will develop into an adult human being a possible possessor
of rights?
2. Is the fetus qua fetus a possible possessor of rights?
I agree with potentialists that the first question is to be answered in the affirmative
(as it is about Q2-properties that are sufficient to ground rights), but I disagree that
this answer implies anything about the second question (as it is about Qp-properties)
and, in fact, argue that this second question must be answered in the negative.
21
Stone, “Why Potentiality Matters,” 141.
22
Here I side with the current trend, the view that existence is a property; perhaps Stone
disagrees. For an account of the now unfashionable view, see David Wiggins, “The
Kant-Frege-Russel View of Existence: Toward the Rehabilitation of the Second-Level
View,” in Modality, Morality, and Belief, ed. W. Sinnot-Armstrong (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), 93–113.
 Potentiality and Possibilia 231

23
Stone, “Why Potentiality Matters,” 141.
24
This is what makes Stone’s criticism a straw man fallacy.
25
Ibid., 140.
26
Feinberg, “Rights of Animals and Unborn Generations,” 160.
27
In my “Why Potentiality Cannot Matter,” but also more recently in “What Is Wrong
with Potentialism?” in Essays in Honor of Burleigh Wilkins: From History to Justice, ed.
A. Jokic (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 231–40.