Was den Menschen zum Menschen macht

Ontologically Uncertain Status

4 Min. Lesezeit

🇩🇪 Deutsche Version: Ontologisch unklarer Status

The ontologically uncertain status is a methodological determination for beings whose personhood can be neither clearly affirmed nor clearly denied.

This is not a lack of diligence but a fitting classification wherever either

  1. the usual epistemic criterion (in particular, origination through fertilization in accordance with the beginning of human existence) does not apply, or
  2. the empirical evidence for the presence of a rational nature (cf. rationality) is insufficient.

In such cases the status is not an open gap in the model but an independent ontological determination: the entity belongs to a class that designates precisely the openness of its personal status.

A Methodological Principle: in dubio pro persona

Wherever personal status remains open, the traditional principle in dubio pro persona applies (analogous to the criminal-law principle in dubio pro reo). Where there is uncertainty about the personhood of a being, that being is to be treated as though personhood were possible, until a reliable empirical decision determines otherwise.

This principle is not an additional ethical standard — it is the same methodological line that the substance-ontological concept of person brings to bear against premature exclusions from the circle of persons.

Symmetry with the Critique of Singer

The empirical-functionalist concept of person (Locke, Parfit, Singer) is criticized, among other things, by the exclusion objection: it withdraws personal status from embryos, those with severe dementia, and the comatose, even though the ontological evidence for this denial is inadequate.

This critique is methodologically symmetrical: whoever prematurely ascribes personal status to an entity risks a category confusion; whoever prematurely denies it risks precisely the error that personal ontology criticizes in Singer. The “ontologically uncertain status” keeps this symmetry visible — it is the point at which the method is applied to itself.

Asymmetry of the Burden of Proof

From in dubio pro persona there follows an asymmetry in the burden of proof: the burden of proof lies with those who wish to deny personhood, not with those who hold it to be possible. Premature denial is, ontologically as well as historically, riskier than premature affirmation.

This asymmetry is not a merely rhetorical priority but follows from the substantive content itself: a falsely affirmed personhood leads to caution without necessity; a falsely denied personhood leads to the negation of a real person. The harm function is therefore asymmetrical.

Cases of Application

In the present discourse, the ontologically uncertain status is relevant above all for three classes of entities:

  • Synthetic embryo models (iBlastoids, SEMs) — originating not through fertilization, yet growing in biological proximity to the embryo (Hanna Lab 2023, Liu et al. 2021).
  • Beings produced by cloning technology (somatic cell nuclear transfer) — no fertilization, but a concrete line of life of an existing human genome.
  • Conceivable in future: beings arising from in vitro gametogenesis through the union of artificially produced gametes.

In all three cases the methodologically clean classification is neither “is a person” nor “is not a person,” but rather: “status open, in dubio pro persona.”

Ontological Classification

The ontologically uncertain status is an independent determination alongside “is a person” and “is not a person.” It stands deliberately not in a hard exclusion from human person or person — avoiding precisely such a separation is its very point.

Sources: Generated by querying the Personhood ontology.

Further sources:

  • Spaemann, Robert: Persons: The Difference between ‘Someone’ and ‘Something’, transl. Oliver O’Donovan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 (on the methodology of recognition and the reservation against premature determinations).
  • George, Robert P. & Tollefsen, Christopher (2008): Embryo: A Defense of Human Life. New York: Doubleday — ch. 4 (“The Argument from Potential”) and ch. 6 (“Difficult Cases”) on the burden-of-proof argument.
  • Snead, O. Carter (2020): What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press — an anthropology of vulnerability.

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