“SANCTIFIED IN THE WOMB”:
PRE-NATAL CONSCIOUSNESSby Joseph Kenny, O.P.
for World Day of Philosophy, Nnamdi Azikwe University, Awka
14 November 2011
From Aristotle to our day, the debate has gone on. What organic basis is required for the beginning of human life, for conscious activity, for lower or higher levels of conscious activity? Can this be put in a time-frame?
Many opinions have been aired. As an introduction, I briefly review the major ones, then assess them. Then I pass to the focus of this paper, combining current physiological evidence with metaphysical principles supplied by Thomas Aquinas, to conclude what we can regarding consciousness of the unborn.
The major opinions
(1) Pre-existant human souls are joined at some point to the conceived organism This opinion goes back to Plato (Timaeus 44d-47e). Some Christian thinkers, notably Origen, are said to have supported it.
Some African traditions go in the same direction, particularly the idea of reincarnation, if we take it literally.
(2) Human life begins with the male seed, collectively created in Adam, and emerging in his descendants This is an ancient Semitic belief, echoing in the Bible and in the Qur'ān. 1 Corinthians says: "All die in Adam" (15:22). The Letter to the Hebrews says: "It could be said that Levi himself, who receives tithes, actually paid tithes, in the person of Abraham, because he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek came to meet him" (7:10).
The Qur'ān (2:223) presents the mother as merely the "field" in which the father sows his seed. In line with this view, the Qur'ān (7:172)describes the whole human race as actually present in the body of Adam, where they all made a pact with God. Ibn-Hishām (1:157) presents Muhammad as the first creation of God, who passed as light from Adam down the male line to `Abdallāh, who deposited it in Āmina.
(3) Delayed hominization in the womb Aristotle holds that the semen and the egg have nutritive souls, just as much as plants do. But, as Aristotle's followers understood him, the sensitive soul comes later, and still later the intellective soul. I do not think Aristotle's Greek text supports that theory-translations often confuse κύημα (female egg) with "embryo". Nevertheless, delayed reception was the prevalent interpretation in the Middle Ages.[1]
Thomas Aquinas elaborates and defends this position in Contra Gentiles, II, q. 58, n. 4, and in q. 89. He argues from the position that, at conception, the fetus does not have sufficient organic differentiation to support a sensitive, much less an intellective soul.
How long does this development take?
Aristotle: De historia animalium, Book 7, ch. 3 (583b, 2-5): In the case of male children the first movement usually occurs on the right-hand side of the womb and about the fortieth day, but if the child be a female then on the left-hand side and about the ninetieth day.
Lecturing on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (III, d. 3, q. 5, a. 2), Thomas Aquinas quotes Augustine's reference to this text, who misinterprets "movement" as "quickening", or the moment the fetus becomes human. Thomas does not question this, except to say that it does not apply to the conception of Christ -a position he repeats in Summa theologiae, III, q. 33, a. 2, arg. 3.
The basis of Aristotle's and Aquinas' position is the principle, "Potency must correspond to act." That fundamental principle runs through Aristotle's works on physical science, and is enshrined in his Metaphysics. Teachers sometimes illustrate it by the aphorism: "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."
Aristotle's defined the soul (which we can translate as "life") as "the first act of an organic body". The body must have the organic complexity required by the type of soul or life: Nutritive life requires the least; sensitive life requires more; and intellective life still more.
Because Aristotelians and Aquinas could not see this required complexity, they concluded that the human soul was infused later.
Aristotle uses the same argument to show why are some people more intelligent than others: "A sign of this is that within the human race, men are gifted or not intellectually in virtue of this sense [of touch], and of no other. For coarse-bodied people are mentally inert, whilst the tenderly-fleshed are quick of understanding."[2]
Islamic Hadith, and influential classical Qur'an commentaries agree with Aristotle's delayed hominization. For example, Al-Qurṭubī, on Q 22:5, says that the (rational) spirit is breathed in only at the one hundred twentieth day (i.e., four months).
(4) Hominization with conception This, of course, is the position of pro-life movement at the present time. It is not a new position, but goes back to Ibn-Sīnā (Avicenna). He knew Aristotle, and wrote his ash-Shifā', covering all branches of knowledge, in parallel to the Aristotelian corpus. It was not a commentary, like those of the later Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) and Thomas Aquinas, but an original book, written with reference to Aristotle.
He takes up the question of fetus development in chapter 16 of his 8th book of Natural Science, entitled Animals (الحيواون). I have published a detailed study of this elsewhere,[3] and here give only a summary. Ibn-Sīnā argues that an individual cannot mutate, mid-stream, from one species to another. It is what it is right from conception. Its powers are there from the start, but cannot act until their required organs develop sufficiently.
Ibn-Sīnā had no microscope. Yet he did conduct empirical observation, and in chapter 9, section 5, gives the following sequence for the development of an embryo, with allowance for variance:
The foamy period: 6 days Red lines and points: day 9 Blood throughout: day 15 Flesh and distinction of the three organs [heart, brain, liver]: day 27 The head and limbs distinct: day 36 All organs clearly distinct: day 40 Since doing my study of Ibn-Sīnā, I discovered that Albert the Great agrees exactly with Ibn-Sīnā on this question.[4]
Evaluation
- Aristotle does not consider the first theory, that of pre-existent souls. In The generation of animals, he discusses human generation from a purely physiological standpoint. In his De anima, he affirms, with regard to the agent intellect, that it is "separable, uncompounded... immortal and incorruptible" (Book III, ch. 5). Aristotle does not explain, as Aquinas does, how the agent intellect (which abstracts the intelligible content of sense data) and the passive intellect (which "knows") are both powers of an immortal soul. In The generation of animals, ch. 16, Aristotle says that such a soul must come "from without" (θύρωθεν).
Christian and most Muslim philosophers reject the hypothesis of pre-existent human souls. For example, Ibn-Sīnā explicitly denies that the human soul has any existence before the body.[5] As a Platonic theory, it has little resonance in popular religious milieux, except for certain esoteric Sūfī or Shī`a circles (as can be seen by a Google search in English or Arabic).
- As for the second theory, that the male seed is the complete child, Aristotle, followed by his Greek and medieval commentators, rejects it altogether.[6] Ibn-Sīnā follows Aristotle's reasoning that the male seed can have no more than a transient life, and becomes human only after acting on its female counterpart. He goes beyond Aristotle in insisting that both parents contribute to the makeup of the child, shown by the fact that they resemble both.
Nonetheless, it attracts many Muslims, first because of its consonance with the Qur'ān verses cited above, and secondly because it treats Adam's descendants as whole units, body and soul together, unlike the disembodied souls of Platonic tradition.
- The third theory, of delayed hominization, conflicts with the Qur'ān imagery that the father transmits one of Adam's pre-existent descendants into the womb of his wife.
Another passage, Qur'ān 23:13-14 might seem to support delayed hominization:
سورة المؤمنون (23):
وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنْسَانَ مِنْ سُلَالَةٍ مِنْ طِينٍ (١٢) ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَاهُ نُطْفَةً فِي قَرَارٍ مَكِينٍ (١٣) ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا النُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا الْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا الْمُضْغَةَ عِظَامًا فَكَسَوْنَا الْعِظَامَ لَحْمًا ثُمَّ أَنْشَأْنَاهُ خَلْقًا آَخَرَ فَتَبَارَكَ اللَّهُ أَحْسَنُ الْخَالِقِينَ (١٤)
We created man from a slip of mud, then we created him a drop in a stable repository. Then we made the drop an attachment. Then we made the attachment a lump. Then we made the lump into bones which we clothed with flesh. Then we made him another creation. Blessed be God, the best Creator.
Al-Qurṭubī accommodates this passage to argue for delayed hominization. Others, such as Fakhr ad-dīn ar-Rāzī, do not support al-Qurṭubī's interpretation.
Where the Qur'ān admits of diverse interpretations, Muslims are free to disagree. Nevertheless, the fatwas of religious leaders and the opinions of scholars carry considerable weight.
We can take Aida I. Al Aqeel as an example. She is a Senior Consultant Paediatric Medical Geneticist and Endocrinologist at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre, with an intimidating C.V.[7] Rather than physiological evidence, she cites a Hadith (in Bukhari[8]) to say: "Human life begins at the time of ensoulment, which is stated... to be at 120th day from the moment of conception, which is equivalent to 134 days from the last menstrual period (LMP) used by obstetricians. Prior to that moment the embryo has sanctity, but not reaching that of a full human being."
Yet no one today offers scientific or philosophical evidence for a change of species in the development of a zygote. We see an egg hatch into a caterpillar, which then turns into a pupa, and finally a butterfly. It is the same individual, the same species, with the same genetic material throughout. Every detail of the adult is already mapped out in the fertilized egg.
Even many abortion supporters agree that the zygote is living and human, but only a "potential person", simply because it is not "conscious", and not "physically independent".[9]
- That leaves us with the fourth option, hominization with conception. The zygote, according to the definition of Boethius, is a person, "an individual substance of rational nature". Ibn-Sīnā, as well as the modern proponents of hominization with conception, see the zygote as endowed with all its powers, nutrient, sensitive and rational, although there is a delay in the awakening of the sensitive and intellective powers, because the sense organs, which even the intellect must refer to, are not developed.
Taking this fourth option as established, I go on to discuss the main issue of this paper, "How early can pre-natal consciousness be?"
Pre-natal consciousness: around 20 days from conception?
I take consciousness as meaning the intellect's act of knowing. It results in habitual knowledge, but we do not say that someone asleep is conscious. Anyone who has had experience with infants recognizes that they know a lot, well before they learn to talk, or understand what you say.
There are two principles controlling the development of intellectual knowledge:
- There is nothing in the intellect which is not first in the senses.
- Knowledge progresses from what is general and imperfect to the specific and more perfect.
Our first conclusion must be: Prenatal consciousness cannot precede first sensation.
When, then, does sensation begin? Sensation, we are told, requires a nervous system. We are also told that by the 20th day the foundation of the nervous system is laid.[10]
Among the senses, the sense of touch is the most basic and the first to develop, in any of its variant forms: sense of pressure, of temperature etc.
Our second conclusion can be: As soon as the unborn child receives its first sensation, the intellect is ready to act.
We then ask, what can the intellect know from one primitive sensation? Thomas Aquinas explains:
Now the division which is implied in the notion of that kind of unity which is interchangeable with being is not the division of continuous quantity, which is understood prior to that kind of unity which is the basis of number, but is the division which is caused by contradiction, inasmuch as two particular beings are said to be divided by reason of the fact that this being is not that being. Therefore what we first understand is being, and then division, and next unity, which is the privation of division, and lastly multitude, which is a composite of units.[11]
So the baby's first concept is that of "being", yes physical being, in its most general, most imperfect sense. In the opening chapter of his Physics, Aristotle explains:
The natural way of doing this is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not 'knowable relatively to us' and 'knowable' without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature. Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which become known to us later by analysis. Thus we must advance from generalities to particulars... Similarly a child begins by calling all men 'father', and all women 'mother', but later on distinguishes each of them.
Commenting on the same passage, Thomas Aquinas says:
That universals are confused is clear. For universals contain in themselves their species in potency. And whoever knows something in the universal knows it indistinctly. The knowledge, however, becomes distinct when each of the things which are contained in potency in the universal is known in act. For he who knows animal does not know the rational except in potency. Thus knowing something in potency is prior to knowing it in act. Therefore, according to this order of learning, in which we proceed from potency to act, we know animal before we know man.
Concretely, the first object of the baby's sensation is the mother's womb, at the source of its nourishment. The baby, thus, gets a concept of being, being which is convertible with good, a very concrete and lovable good, in the baby's experience. Only well after birth will he know and cling to Mother, as distinct from everyone and everything else.
Next, the baby realizes that this good being is another being, distinct from himself. They are two beings. And maybe there is something beyond the two, an ultimate Being, and ultimate Good. How is that possible?
Thomas Aquinas, like so many before and after him, thought that the use of reason comes roughly around the age of seven. In this, he would be following the canonical authority, Gratian.
In a discussion about sin, Thomas raises what seems an odd question: "Can the first act of an unbaptized child reaching the use of reason be a venial sin?" He answers:
I answer that, It is impossible for venial sin to be in anyone with original sin alone, and without mortal sin. The reason for this is because before a man comes to the age of discretion, the lack of years hinders the use of reason and excuses him from mortal sin, wherefore, much more does it excuse him from venial sin, if he does anything which is such generically. But when he begins to have the use of reason, he is not entirely excused from the guilt of venial or mortal sin. Now the first thing that occurs to a man to think about then, is to deliberate about himself. And if he then direct himself to the due end, he will, by means of grace, receive the remission of original sin: whereas if he does not then direct himself to the due end, and as far as he is capable of discretion at that particular age, he will sin mortally, for through not doing that which is in his power to do...[12]
This passage presupposes that the child can grasp, without scientific reasoning, in an intuitive manner, that the physical good of his environment is a limited, contingent participation in an absolute
Good. He is naturally capable of recognizing that, and his will -moved by grace, as theology insists- is capable of choosing that end.The process is parallel to that of the angels, which Thomas discusses in the previous article, whose intelligence guides them from themselves straight to their Creator. Then, their very first act of will either wins them the vision of God or puts them in perpetual sin.[13]
Relevant also is his reference to "implicit faith", an imperfect kind of knowledge, which however is sufficient for connecting with the Creator and his plan of salvation.
Many of the gentiles received revelation of Christ... If, however, some were saved without receiving any revelation, they were not saved without faith in a mediator, for, though they did not believe in Him explicitly, they did, nevertheless, have implicit faith through believing in Divine providence, since they believed that God would deliver mankind in whatever way was pleasing to Him, and according to the revelation of the Spirit of those who knew the truth, as stated in Job 35:11: "Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth."[14]
Can we push back the date of consciousness?
The key to consciousness is sensation. The intellect cannot operate without reference to a sensory image. We noted the scientific consensus that the nervous system is the basis of sensation. Yet two other considerations raise an additional hypothesis.
First, there are some primitive organisms, recognized as animals (and therefore sensory), which do not have a nervous system, for instance the sponge,[15] or the Placozoan.[16] I pass over bacteria, which are not universally recognized as animals. In all of these, we hear of "electrical signals" or "biochemical reactions, such as electron transport across the cell membrane".
What does this amount to? Does it enable these primitive animals to sense approaching food? Is there any parallel primitive sensation in the human zygote? Further scientific research should investigate this.
Secondly, although there is no developed nervous system at conception, its details are all mapped out, and the mechanism for its development is present. Activity within the minute structure of a zygote must be very difficult to observe. Does its implantation involve sensation? That is an area for further research.
In the meantime, we might turn to Thomas Aquinas' defense of the full humanity of Christ right from conception -unlike the delayed hominization he held for everyone else. For him, the "small quantity" of matter was disposed, by divine power, to receive a human soul right from the start.[17] It had all the differentiation necessary not only for an intellective soul, but also for sensitive and intellective action.
I would like to think that, as Thomas was wrong in excluding a human soul from the rest of humanity at conception, he was also wrong in excluding from them the exercise of its sensitive and intellective powers from the start.
That is my hypothesis. Only empirical investigation can bear it out.
[1] De generatione animalium, Book 2, ch. 3-6.
[2] De anima, II, ch. 9 421a24. See Thomas Aquinas' Commentary, #483.
[3] "Ibn-Sīnā and the origin of human life," in Islam, cultural transformation, and the re-emergence of falsafah. Studies honoring Professor George Francis McLean on his eightieth birthday, ed. Karim Douglas Crow (Tehran: Iranian Institute of Philosophy, 1999), pp. 1-15. Ibn-Sīnā discusses human conception and gestation also in his Qānūn fī ṭ-ṭibb, Book III, treatise 21, article 2, but says nothing new, and only refers to his works on natural science for a fuller discussion.
[4] Si enim puer diceretur primo habere substantiam sensibilem, et postea adipisci animam vel substantiam rationalem, permutaretur de specie ad speciem, et forma substantiali ad formam: quod dicere est absurdum. -De animalibus, Tractatus I, ch. 16 (Borgnet ed. p. 70).
[5] Ta`līqāt, pp. 63-64, 81, 110 (Cairo, ).
[6] De generatione animalium, Book 2, ch. 3.
[7] See her site: http://www.hgm2011.org/aida_i_al_aqeel.html.
[8] البخاري: الصحيح، كتاب التوحيد، باب 28 ولقد سبقت كلمتنا لعبادنا المرسلين #7016 (& #1226، #6222)
[9] See, for example, http://www.elroy.net/ehr/abortionanswers.html.
[10] See, e.g., http://peacepigeon.tripod.com/fetal.html.
[11] Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book X, lectio 4, 1997; cf. Book IV, lectio 3, #566.
[12] Summa theologiae I-II, q. 89, a. 6.
[13] Summa theologiae I-II, q. 89, a. 5; I, q. 62, a. 4.
[14] Summa theologiae I, q. 10, a. 7, ad 3.
[15] Cf. http://universe-review.ca/R10-33-anatomy.htm.
[16] Cf. http://www.science20.com/news_releases/placozoa_now_most_primitive_animal_tree_life.
[17] Summa theologiae III, q. 6, a. 4; Contra Gentiles, IV, ch. 44.