Project Overview

The BUMP (Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy) project launches the metaphysics of pregnancy as an important and fundamental area of philosophical research. Running from 2016 to 2022, it is led by Elselijn Kingma, hosted by King’s College London (from 2021; previously by the University of Southampton) and funded by a €1.2m ERC Starting Grant. It began as part of a series of projects on the Philosophy of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood being run by Elselijn Kingma and Fiona Woollard.

Questions

Every single human is the product of a pregnancy: an approximately nine-month period during which a fetus develops within its mother’s body. Yet pregnancy has not been a traditional focus in philosophy. That is remarkable, for two reasons.

First, because pregnancy presents us with fascinating philosophical problems. What, during a pregnancy, is the nature of the relationship between the fetus and the maternal organism? What is the relationship between the pregnant organism and the later baby? And when, in the course of a pregnancy, does a new organism emerge?

Second, because so many topics immediately adjacent to or involved in pregnancy have taken centre stage in philosophical enquiry. Examples include questions about personhood, fetuses, personal identity and the self.

This project launches the metaphysics of pregnancy as an important and fundamental area of philosophical research.

Aims

The core aims of the project are:

1. To develop a philosophically sophisticated account of human pregnancy and birth, and the entities involved in this, that is attentive to our best empirical understanding of human reproductive biology;

2. To articulate the metaphysics of organisms, persons and selves in a way that acknowledges the details of how we come into existence; and

3. To start the process of rewriting the legal, social and moral language we use to classify ourselves and our actions, so that it is compatible with and can accommodate the nature of pregnancy.

Proposals

Copies of the project’s research proposals can be downloaded below:

• Short version

• Long version