Category: Abortion
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Potentiality, Abortion, Contraception
This interesting missive just over the transom. My responses in blue. I have been pondering your application of the Potentiality Principle to the question of abortion. It is undoubtedly the case that a one year old child has the potential to become an adult possessing rights-conferring properties. It is also undoubtedly the case, for much…
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Abortion, the Potentiality Principle, the Species Principle, and the Species Potentiality Principle
A reader comments: In an earlier post, Why We Should Accept the Potentiality Principle (24 October 2009), you suggest that we should apply the potentiality principle — All potential persons have a right to life — to the unborn to be consistent, as we already apply it to children. What troubles me is this: how do…
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When Does A Human Life Begin?
This from a reader: I enjoy reading Maverick Philosopher even though I seldom agree with the conservative viewpoint. The thing that I find most interesting about your articles on abortion is that they really do not address what I consider to be the central issue and that is when does human life begin. Zygote, blastomere,…
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Charles Hartshorne on Abortion
The eminent philosopher Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) in Concerning Abortion: Attempt at a Rational View writes: What is the moral question regarding abortion? We are told that the fetus is alive and that therefore killing it is wrong. Since mosquitoes, bacteria, apes and whales are also alive, the argument is less than clear. Even plants are…
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The Woman’s Body Argument
The following is an abortion argument one often hears. It is sometimes called the Woman's Body Argument. I will argue that it is not rationally compelling. 1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body.2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.Therefore3. A woman has the right…
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Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?
Is it consistent to support both fetal rights and the moral acceptability of capital punishment? That depends on what is meant by 'consistent.' Let us begin by asking whether the following propositions are logically consistent. P1. A living human fetus has a right to life which cannot be overridden except in rare cases (e.g. threat…
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An Elementary Confusion Regarding Dispositions and Potentialities
C. B. Martin, "Dispositions and Conditionals," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 174, January 1994, p. 1: We must see that dispositions are actual, though their manifestations may not be. It is an elementary confusion to think of unmanifesting dispositions as unactualized possibilia, though that may characterize unmanifested manifestations. Consider two panes of thin glass…
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‘Probative Overkill’ Objections to the Potentiality Principle
Here is a simple version of the Potentiality Argument (PA): 1. All potential persons have a right to life.2. The human fetus is a potential person.—–3. The human fetus has a right to life. Does PA 'prove too much'? It does if the proponent of PA has no principled way of preventing PA from transmogrifying…
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The Potentiality Universality Principle and Feinberg’s “Logical Point”
I have already introduced PIP, PEP, and PAP as three principles governing potentiality in the precise sense relevant to the Potentiality Argument. Now I introduce a fourth principle for your inspection which I will call the Potentiality Universality Principle: PUP: Necessarily, if a normal F has the potentiality to become a G, then every normal…
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The Potentiality Argument Against Abortion and Feinberg’s Logical Point About Potentiality
I claim that the standard objections to the Potentiality Argument (PA) are very weak and can be answered. This is especially so with respect to Joel Feinberg's "logical point about potentiality," which alone I will discuss in this post. This often-made objection is extremely weak and should persuade no rational person. But first a guideline…
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Identity, Constitution, and Potentiality With a Little Help from PIP, PEP, and PAP
Pointing to a lump of raw ground beef, someone might say, "This is a potential hamburger." Or, pointing to a hunk of bronze, "This is a potential statue." Someone who says such things is not misusing the English language, but he is not using 'potential' in the strong specific way that potentialists — proponents of…
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Why We Should Accept the Potentiality Principle
The idea behind the Potentiality Principle (PP) is that potential personhood confers a right to life. For present purposes we may define a person as anything that is sentient, rational, and self-aware. Actual persons have a right to life, a right not to be killed. Presumably we all accept the following Rights Principle: RP: All…
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Persons and the Moral Relevance of Their Capacities
Those who accept the following Rights Principle (RP) presumably also accept as a codicil thereto a Capacities Principle (CP): RP. All persons have a right to life. CP. All persons have a right to life even at times when they are not exercising any of the capacities whose exercise confers upon them the right to…
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Opposition to Abortion Need Not be Religiously Based
It is commonly assumed that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises. To show that this assumption is false, only one counterexample is needed. What follows is an anti-abortion argument that does not invoke any religious tenet: (1) Infanticide is morally wrong; (2) There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and…
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Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency
A reader inquires: This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first…