Can appealing to children’s rights help to solve the non-identity problem in cases of procreation? A number of philosophers have answered affirmatively, arguing that even if children cannot be harmed by being born into disadvantaged conditions, they may nevertheless be wronged if those conditions fail to meet a minimal standard of decency to which all children are putatively entitled. This paper defends the tenability of this view by outlining and responding to five prominent objections that have been raised against it (...) in the contemporary literature: the identifiability objection; the non-existence objection; the waiving of rights objection, the lack of legitimate complaint objection; and the unfairness objection. (shrink)

This article addresses the bioethical challenges raised by end-of-life care (EoLC) from the perspective of Islamic normativity. Rejecting positivist positions, it argues for the use of a flexible approach midway between a deontological conception of human life as having a sacred value that cannot be bargained over, as represented by the teachings of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's, and one that introduces considerations of pain (alam) and pleasure (ladhdah) into ethical evaluations, as expounded by the jurist Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. Under this approach, (...) described as “Islamic evaluator relativity,” moral agents formulate a normative position tailored to their beliefs and the circumstances of the case, in which the right course of action is expressed as a value judgement (amr ijtihādi) and the evaluator (mujtahid) is rewarded regardless of the choices they make. Keywords: Islamic bioethics, End-of-life-care, bioethics, normative ethics. (shrink)