Abortion Is Morally Permissible

In my closing remarks I will attempt to draw together some of the threads of the arguments I presented and summarize them as best I can. I will also be addressing the four different arguments that Con has put against my position. C1: It is not always prima facie wrong to kill an innocent human being. In his second round, Con has raised three different objections to my brain-death counterexample. 1. First, Con argues that our moral intuitions that brain-dead people don't have a right to life could be inaccurate. Well, this argument is contingent upon Warren's criteria for personhood being false. And none of Con's objections that he raised in (C4) or elsewhere are successful, so this response goes down the drain. 2. Second, Con argues that brain-death does represent a substantial change in an organism. Apparently, Patrick Lee has changed his mind on this subject. However, Lee's argument is simply irrelevant because it is based on "total brain death. "[1] I specifically mentioned "upper brain death" in my first round. Therefore, Con's objection does not apply. 3. Third, Con states that brain-dead individuals have a right to life, but not to life-support. But his argument here is simply irrelevant, since my same objection would apply even if he's correct. Suppose, for example, that a certain brain-dead individual can survive for, say, twelve hours without life-support. According to Con, it would still be prima facie seriously wrong to kill them in this twelve hour time span. This can't be true. None of Con's three objections have survived. Further, despite what Con has claimed, I've actually raised two other objections in my second round. If the substance view is true and the right to life is an essential property, anencephalic fetuses and the irreversibly comatose have a right to life. Patrick Lee has explicitly pointed this out on numerous occasions. [2-3] Clearly, this cannot be correct. And the rest of my argument supports this view. As Beckwith explains, the substance view is vindicated by its alleged explanatory power. [4] Con has presented one argument for this position (i. e. , the infant objection), which I will respond to again later on. So, even if my counterexample objections against his argument fail, which they do not, his argument still has no support and should be rejected. C2: Brain death is not always the death of the human being. I've already responded to Con's three objections to my brain death counterexample objection. C3: The future like ours argument is not valid. I've also already negated Marqui's FLO argument. The argument is based entirely on a false analogy. [5] As David Boonin points out, a fetus, unlike you, I or a six-year-old, does not (and cannot) value their future and is not conscious. Depriving them of their future, therefore, is not seriously wrong. Likewise, Con's suicide objection is fallacious because it fails to take into account the important moral differences between "actual" and "ideal" desires. C4: A fetus is not a person and thus cannot have a serious right to life. I've argued throughout this debate that a fetus does not have a right to life because it is not a person. In defense of this view, I've argued that Warren's criteria for personhood should be accepted because (1) they have explanatory scope; (2) they are non-arbitrary; and (3) it is very plausible that rights function to protect interests. I shall refer to my position as the "mentalist view," since it more clearly describes my position. While attempting to falsify my argument, Con has raised four different objections against the criteria for personhood that I outlined. 1. First, Con seems to suggest that it is self-evident that infants have a right to life, and therefore a right to life cannot be grounded in the capacity for consciousness. I will respond by repeating what Peter Singer has indicated. This view has not been self-evident to many cultures in human history. And as I predicted, Con has tried to vindicate his moral intuitions against infanticide by trying to prove that his other arguments are correct. I maintain that my opponent's other arguments aren't successful. Moreover, the view that infants don't have a right to life does not necessarily mean that it's ok to kill infants for no reason. Even Peter Singer has admitted that there may be overriding reasons for keeping in place laws that prohibit infanticide. [6] 2. Second, Con has argued that Warren's criteria for personhood implies that people with low I. Q. 's don't have a right to life. I submit that his objection is plainly nonsense. This argument is prima facie implausible since virtually everyone denies this implication of my argument, including philosophers who adopt mental criteria for personhood such as Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and Marry Anne Warren. Even people with low I. Q. 's are self-conscious and can reason. This objection is thinly veiled propaganda and has no bearing against my position. Con goes on to suggest that someone who is in a coma and who is, in essence, a blank slate has a right to life. As the philosopher Nathan Nobis points out, this entire objection simply begs the question. [7] Any being that has lost all of his or her memories, personality traits, desires and is in a reversible coma is morally similar to a fetus. Con is attempting to resolve one controversy by appealing to another controversy. I maintain that such a human would not have a right to life, though there may be good reasons to keep them alive. 3. Third, Con goes on to assert that my position has unacceptable moral implications. Well, I don't think that creating brainless humans for organ transplants is seriously wrong. Once the gruesome imagery of such a task is overcome, many people would conclude that creating brainless humans for organ transplants would be a good thing since it could save people. Beckwith seems to suggest that his objections about creating brainless humans is built on moral intuitions. [8] And I've already shown that moral intuitions are unreliable by citing the work of Paul Slovic. The same critique applies to creating biological and non-sentient sex dolls. If these dolls truly are empty vessels mentally, then what's the problem? Con has nothing more to appeal to other than his unfounded intuitions. Also, it is wrong to kill indoctrinated slaves or steal money from someone's inheritance because doing so would violate these individuals ideal desires. (See my round 2 (C3) for my longer description of this point. ) Even if the slave had its brain altered to remove desires before he became conscious, the slave would still be self-conscious and thus would qualify as a person. 4. And finally, Con has introduced what is generally referred to as the "fission problem" against the psychological approach of personal identity. There is a solution to this problem. Harold Noonan, a professor of mind and cognition at the University of Nottingham, has pointed out that psychological continuity by itself is not necessarily sufficient for one to persist. [9] Rather, a person can be identical with a past or future being only insofar as that person is then psychologically continuous with that person and no other being is. This solution avoids the fission problem, and thus Con's objection does not succeed. | Conclusion | Neither of the two arguments that Con has presented are able to demonstrate that abortion is morally impermissible. The substance view has no support and is subject to three clear counterexamples. Likewise, a fetus isn't conscious and is also incapable of valuing its future. Moreover, all of the four objections that Con has raised against Warren's psychological criteria for personhood have been refuted. Therefore, it is still the case that abortion is morally permissible. Sources: . http://tinyurl.com...