Um argumento recorrente contra a liberalização do aborto parte do pressuposto de que, desde o momento da fertilização, seres humanos são indivíduos (no sentido de serem algo que necessariamente ocorre em uma entidade apenas). Nesse artigo, argumento que esse não é um caso a partir da possibilidade de geminação monozigótica e do fato de identidades serem necessárias. Defendo as premissas do argumento e discuto as possíveis interpretações de sua conclusão. Argumento que a interpretação completa da conclusão desse argumento está em (...) concordância com a conclusão de um argumento semelhante, que parte de noção de organismo. -/- ENGLISH: A common pro-life argument assumes that humans are individuals (in the sense that they necessarily occur in one entity only) from the moment of fertilization. In this paper, argue that this is not the case because of the possibility of monozygotic twinning and the necessity of identities. I will defend the premises of the argument and discuss the possible interpretations of its conclusion. I argue that the correct interpretation of the conclusion of this argument is in agreement with the conclusion of a similar arguments from the notion of organism. (shrink)

This paper explores the ethical implications of a possible future technology; namely cryonics of embryos/fetuses extracted from the uterus. We argue that more research should be conducted in order to explore the feasibility of such technology. We highlight the advantages that this option would offer; including the foreseeable prevention of a considerable number of abortions.

Jan Narveson criticizes the view expressed in my Libertarian Philosophy in the Real World that there is no orthodox libertarian position on the ethics of abortion. He asserts that fetuses lack the defining characteristics of personhood, and thus are ineligible for what he terms “intrinsic” rights under his, and presumably any other, plausible libertarian theory. My counterargument is threefold: Narveson’s contractarianism can be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the pro-life perspective; because his theory permits no principled distinction (...) between the moral status of third trimester fetuses and newborns, the contrary reading of his social contract produces a result that is implausible and even repellent; and even if his version of contractarianism does imply a unique, aggressively pro-choice stance on abortion, there are competing libertarian theories that are receptive to pro-life views. (shrink)

: I take issue with the view that libertarian theory does not imply any particular stand on abortion. Liberty is the absence of interference with people’s wills—interests, wishes, and desires. Only entities that have such are eligible for the direct rights of libertarian theory. Foetuses do not; and if aborted, there is then no future person whose ….

Induced abortion continues to be a subject of ethical and moral debates, with the hope that reaching an agreement on what is deemed morally permissible will guide how the society ought to respond by legislating appropriate legal guidelines. The aim of this essay is to examine who constitutes moral privileges in society and more specifically, the criterion on which membership in the moral community is granted. In this paper, I will argue that membership to the human race is not in (...) itself a well supported proposition for accessing moral privileges, but rather, there must be a criterion which forms the basis of this differential treatment. I will endeavour to show that whatever this criterion is set to be, there will be a stage during pregnancy where the fetus will lack that attribute. It is by this deductive reasoning I will demonstrate that terminating pregnancy, before the fetus fulfills the criterion required for gaining moral privileges, is morally permissible. Holding any philosophical position on the debate inherits the burden to reason how that view will be translated in determining the legal status of abortion. For this, I will demonstrate how it follows that different rational individuals can have varying criterion for determining access to moral community, all of which must be respected by the legal practice. The only way to legally respect these gradation of criteria, and by extension the individual who sets them, is by making all cases of abortion legally permissible. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is an analysis of the Continuity Argument, one of the most influential arguments upon which the moral condemnation of scientific and medical practices such as embryo research and experimentation, assisted reproduction, abortion, therapeutic cloning, etc. are based. I have firstly given a very brief account of the approach that attributes the status of marker event to fertilization, identifying the Continuity Argument between other argumentation. Further, I have tried to distinguish the three possible interpretations of (...) the notion of continuity assumed in the Continuity Argument, and to isolate the most persuasive formulation of Continuity Argument. Finally, I argue that even from the most convincing philosophical and scientific interpretation of the post-fertilization continuity, it does not follow: that fertilization is a necessary determinant of moral status; that fertilization is the most reasonable determinant of moral status. In short, this article has two goals: to show that this very argument does not entail the stance that the above mentioned practices are morally impermissible; to suggest that some pragmatic strategies which treat sorites-infected paradoxes could insure a philosophically and scientifically appropriate framework for an alternative approach. (shrink)

I discuss the propositional knowledge of an omniscient being, knowledge of facts that can be represented by that-clauses in sentences such as ‘John knows that the world is round.’ I shall focus upon questions about a supposedly omniscient being who propositionally knows the truth about all current states of affairs. I shall argue that there is no such being.

We commonly attribute to states and other institutional organizations moral duties and obligations. For example, it is widely held that the state has a moral duty to protect its citizens from external threats and it is claimed that it ought to positively promote the welfare of its members. When we focus on the surface grammar of such institutional duty-claims, we see that they seem to differ from individual duty-claims only with respect to the subject of the claim. Whereas an institutional (...) duty-claim asserts that an institution has a duty to do some action a, an individual duty-claim asserts that a particular individual person has a duty to a. For example, we might claim that parents ought to protect their children, or that a particular person, Doe, ought to take better care of his child. Many scholars have argued or at least assumed that institutions are ultimately just collections of individuals, and hence institutional duty-claims can be analyzed in terms of claims about individuals' duties and obligations. Other scholars have rejected this reductive approach to institutional duty-claims as well as the individualist assumption upon which it is premised--viz., that institutions are nothing "over and above" individuals. Instead, it is argued that at least some institutional organizations are moral agents in their own right which have duties and obligations that are uniquely their own. According to this antireductive holist approach, at least some institutional duty-claims resist being analyzed into claims about individuals' duties and obligations. My aim in this dissertation is to clarify what is meant when we assert that the state has moral duties, and I do so by entering into dialogue with both the reductive individualist and antireductive holist views. In Chapter One I situate and motivate my project by reference to two well-known debates in which claims about the state's duties play an inescapably central role; viz., the debate concerning the propriety of using so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the War on Terror and the debate surrounding the most recent reforms to the health care system here in the United States. Since my aim is to shed light on the meaning of and truth-makers for institutional duty-claims, I devote Chapter Two to the task of clarifying what we mean and imply when we advance duty-claims in what we may assume to be paradigmatic circumstances: namely, those circumstances in which an individual is said to have a duty to do something or another. I then frame the further investigation into the meaning and significance of institutional duty-claims as one which has the aim of revealing whether the phrase 'has a duty' has a univocal, analogous, or equivocal signification across institutional and individual contexts. In Chapter Three I take up the task of characterizing and distinguishing the relevant reductive individualist and antireductive holist viewpoints, considering both historically significant and contemporary versions of each. In Chapter Four I present and critically evaluate a rather influential argument in favor of institutional moral agency, which, if true, would vindicate the antireductive holist approach. I conclude that chapter by arguing that, contrary to the claims made by those who defend institutional agency, we are unjustified in believing that institutions possess those properties requisite for moral agency. Having set aside what I take to be a "best-case" for an antireductive holism, I turn, in Chapter Five, to the task of making plausible the reductive individualist approach. In doing so, I propose that some institutional duty-claims actually resist reduction to claims about individuals' duties and that such claims are thus better understood as claims about the extrinsic value of an institutional arrangement. (shrink)

The work analyzes two competing arguments in the issue of abortion and shows that each requires a different theory of personal identity. Further, I analyze those theories and show what moral premises they are compatible with and what implications there are for the abortion debate.

In ‘What Makes Killing Wrong?’ Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller make the bold claim that killing in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is totally-disabling. In ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ Giubilini and Minerva argue for allowing infanticide. Both papers challenge the stigma commonly associated with killing, and emphasize that killing is not wrong at some margins of life. In this paper, we first generalize the above claims to the thesis that there is nothing morally wrong with killing per (...) se, so long as it is instant and unannounced. Then, from the perspective of social evolution, we explain why people refrain from killing others, the general guideline being that it is unadvisable to kill someone with whom you associate a Second Person Perspective (SPP). Finally, drawing from a seminal paper of Press and Dyson on the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, we stress that an SPP without an SP (Second Person), or the other way around, can both lead to unwelcome results. (shrink)

This article provides an in-depth analysis of the wrongness of killing by comparing different versions of three influential views: the traditional view that killing is always wrong; the liberal view that killing is wrong if and only if the victim does not want to be killed; and Don Marquis’ future of value account of the wrongness of killing. In particular, I illustrate the advantages that a basic version of the liberal view and a basic version of the future of value (...) account have over competing alternatives. Still, ultimately none of the views analysed here are satisfactory; but the different reasons why those competing views fail provide important insights into the ethics of killing. (shrink)