Henry Imler April 18th, 2005

Article: Why Abortion is Immoral
Author: Don Marquis

Summary:

Marquis maintains that the current theories on both sides of the abortion argument are seriously flawed. To him, our lives are valuable. Our lives are valuable because of the value of our future. Thus, beings that have a right to life are being that have a “future like ours”.

Notes:
Marquis thinks that the standard arguments for and against abortion are inadequate, for they arrive at a standstill when pitted against one another.

Standard Anti-abortionist principle: It is always prima facie wrong to take a human life.

Problem: What about human cancer cells? Under this principle, it would be wrong to end that life.

Conclusion: The standard anti-abortionist argument is too broad.

Standard Pro-abortionist principle: It is prima facie wrong to take the life of persons [i.e. rational agents].

Problem The argument does not explain why it seems so very wrong to kill a new born or severely mentally ill.

Conclusion: The standard pro-abortion argument is too narrow.

In light of this, that each position does not have the right scope for the question at hand, one needs to find another avenue of reasoning.

Marquis suggests that we look at why it would be wrong for someone to kill me, the reader. If we can find why it is wrong to kill the reader, then perhaps he can build a principle of why killing is wrong and see if it applies to the abortion debate.

He gives several possible reasons:

Killing brutalizes the one who kills. This only explains the dammage done to the doer of an immoral action and does not explain the immorality of the action. Therefore, this does not help in the problem.

Killing of someone is the loss that others experiance This does not explain why it is wrong to kill hermits who have absolutely no impact on anyone, nor does it explain the harm to the being that is killed.

So far the answers have only looked at the effect on others that a killing has. One needs to look at how the killing effects the one that is killed.

The loss of one’s life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer.

1. The loss of experiances, activities, projects, and enjoyments is a harm to the person who endures the loss.
2. For one to harm another is morally wrong.
3. The loss of one’s life deprives one of all the experiances, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would have otherwise constituted one’s future.
4. Killing someone inflicts #3 on someone.
5. C) Therefore, killing is morally wrong.

Moving forward from this analysis, it is not the change in the biological state of the individual [i.e. physical death], but the loss of what the individual values [or will come to value] in the future. When a person is killed, all that they value currently and will value in the future is robbed of them.

When I die, I am deprived both of what I value now [which will be part of my future values] and what I will value in the future. Therefore, when I am killed, I am deprived of all of the value of my future. The inflicting of this loss is what makes killing me wrong.

Thus, the killing of an adult is wrong becuase of the loss of the person’s future.

This argument will hold if:

1. The explanation fits with our intuitions on the matter
2. There is no other natural property that provies the basis for a better explanation of the wrongness of killing.

Is this the case?

1. Explains why the killing is one of the worst crimes - it deprives the person of more than any other harm.
2. Explains why people who are dying of illnesses, such as AIDS, belive that dying is a very bad thing. They value their future very much and recognize that their future is being cut short.

An alternate theory would have to better explain the two above.

1. Allows for the worth of life of any being with a future similar to ours, i.e. aliens or advanced computer programs.
2. Opposed to the claim that only biological life is worth preserving.
3. The claim that the loss of one’s future is the wrong making feature of one’s being killed open the possibility that some non-human animals with futures sufficiently like ours have lifes worth protecting. This needs an additional account of what it is about my future or the futures of other adult beings which makes it wrong to kill us.
4. does not mean that active euthanasia is wrong. The value of the human’s future is what makes the killing wrong. Hence, if the future is not valued, the the deprivation of the future is ok.
5. This easily gives an account of to why the killing of infants and severely mantally retarded is prima facie wrong. The personhood theories do not account for this, the must add special ad hoc accounts to mend their position.

Application to abortion:
Since the reason that is sufficent to explain why it is wrong to kill human being after the time of birth also applies to fetuses, it follows that abortion is prima facie morally wrong.
This does not rely on the invalid potential personhood arguement.

1. The category of having a valueable future like ours is not the category of personhood.
2. It is independant of the conclusion that abortion is morally wrong proceeded indpendantly of the notion of peronhood.
3. The category of personhood is being used to state the conclusion of the analysis rather than to generate the argument of the analysis.

This arguement only applies prima facie to abortion, there may be other factors that change the outcome.

• Ethics , Notes
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Henry Imler April 15th, 2005

Article: Physician Assisted Suicide: When Self Determination Runs Amok
Author: Dan Callahan

Assertion:
Physician Assisted Suicide is without sufficient justification.

Argument:

If any of premises 2 thru 5 are true, then Physician Assisted Suicide [PAS] is justified.

PAS is the logical extension of of the respect of individual automy, well being, and mercy

There is a moral irrevalence between killing and letting die.

If letting a person die is ok, then the killing of another under the same circumstances is also ok.

There is a lack of evidence showing possible negative consequences of PAS

The Role of the physician demands that PAS be practiced.

Premises 2 thru 5 are not correct

C) PAS is not yet justified

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Henry Imler April 13th, 2005

Article: Is there a Duty to Die?
Author: Hardwig, John

It is not absurd to think that sometimes we have a duty to die.

It is not absurd to think that sometimes our loved ones do not have a duty to continue to support the dying.

Basic Argument:

1. People’s needs and wants and goods are interconnected [rejection of the indivualistic fantasy]
2. It is immoral to impose serious burdens on others to further one’s needs and wants
3. One is not relieved of their moral duties when they are sick and dying.
4. Sometimes continuing to live will place serious burdens on loved ones.
5. ∴ Sometimes one has a duty to die

Hardwig gives the principles on when someone has a duty to die, but repeatedly abstains from giving anyone a duty to die.

Conditions that might lead to a duty to die:

• Fundamental reason: The duty to die [d2d] increases when continuing to live [c2l] will impose significant burdens on those that are interconnected with you [loved ones, family]
  • These burdens can include: emotional, extensive caregiving, destruction of life plans, finacial hardship
• Greater as one grows older
• Have lived a rich life
• Loved one’s life has been difficult or impovrished
• When loved ones have already made significant contributions to your life
• The extent to which you can adjust to your illness, the more one can, the less the duty - note on increased social medicine and hospice
• Less likely of a duty if one can still make contributions to the lives of others
• More likely if your personality dies by a dementing disease
• Greater Duty to die if you have played the part of the grasshopper instead of the ant.

Do the incompetent have a Duty to Die?
They do not if they have never been competent, for nonpersons do not have duties. Hardwig dances around the issue of whether or not the formerly competent can have such a duty.

Social Polices and the Duty to Die:
In light of #6 above, the increase in availibility of social services to the dying decreases the duty for them to die. This is due to postulate #4 in the argument for a duty to die: It is immoral to impose serious burdens on others to further one’s needs and wants.
Accordingly, if society [or anything else] has set up a means of support, and you do not impose a serious burden on loved ones, then you do not have a duty to die.

Conversely, if the loved ones are willing to accept the burden created by keeping you alive, then they may, but they are never forced to carry the burden created by keeping you live, on a prima facie basis.

Misc Points:
Irony that the advances in medicine have created conditions for people to live for a unnaturally long time
The duty to die affirms my moral agency, my personhood.

• To treat one as if they are releaved of their duties when they are sick and dying is to treat them as a child.
• It implies that they are morally incompetent.

Meaning in death requires an affirmation of connections

• Life without connection is meaningless
• These connections can be to other things, like land, nature, ect…

I really think he is worming his way out of the connections/meaning of life issue.

• Does not reflect the actions of Jesus or his followers
• Not clear that the belief that “all life is sacred and therefore we should postpode death as long as possible in all cases” is univerally true
• The bible sends a mixed message on the topic of suicide
  • [I have no idea about this, Saul and Judas were seen in a negative light, but I know of no absolute stipulation against it.]
• Physical Death is not the ultimate evil in the Bible

2. The duty to die is concompatible with human dignity
It actually affirms thier himan dignity to restore to them moral agency.

3. The dying are already shouldering most of the burdens and to give them an additional burden would be wrong.
Is this really true?
Example:

87 year old woman is dying, she wants to live and in the fulfillment of that, her 55 year old daughter takes care of her. The lady lives two years longer instead of the forcasted 6 months. In the span of that time, the duaghter has lost her life plan, her career, her savings, her house, all of which results in a greatly lowered quality of life for a period of 30 years.

Which is the greater burden?

To lose a 50% chance of 6 months of life at age 87.
–or–
To lose one’s life plan, her career, her savings, her house, all of which results in a greatly lowered quality of life for a period of 30 years?

Clearly, the second option is worse

4. The Duty to Die impacts the poor more than the rich.

• This objection is a red herring. That fact is more a critique of the social setup than the duty to die.

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Honzo April 11th, 2005

• Philosophy
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Honzo April 7th, 2005

Is a war, fought for the wrong reasons ever justified? Say, for
arguments sake that a country goes to war for reasons J, P, and Q. Lets
also say that under a valid just war theory, wars can be valid for
reasons A, B, C, J, P, Q, R. Now, the reasons given to the public for
going to war by the government were J, P, and Q. These reasons turn out
to be unsubstantiated.

However, there were reasons A, C, and R that were true for that war that were not given.

Is the war justified?

Lets use an analogy to a math problem. Say a student works out a
math problem on his calc test. His work is detailed, lengthy, but
flawed. He comes to the correct answer anyway.

Is not the answer to the problem still correct even if the work is
not? You cannot use the bad work to justify calling the answer wrong.
You can still doc points from the student for the work though.

Back to the war question. We can draw from the example that if a war
is fought for public reasons that are invalid, but also has nonpublic
reasons that validates the war under the just war theory; then the war
is justified.

However, this does not excuse the people giving the wrong reasons for going to war. Only the war is justified.

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