It is commonly argued that a serious right to life is grounded only in actual, relatively advanced psychological capacities a being has acquired. The moral permissibility of abortion is frequently argued for on these grounds. Increasingly it is being argued that such accounts also entail the permissibility of infanticide, with several proponents of these theories accepting this consequence. We show, however, that these accounts imply the permissibility of even more unpalatable acts than infanticide performed on infants: organ harvesting, (...) live experimentation, sexual interference, and discriminatory killing. The stronger intuitions against the permissibility of these ‘pre-personal acts’ allow us to re-establish a comprehensive and persuasive reductio against psychological accounts of persons. (shrink)

Some responses to analogies between abortion and infanticide appeal to Judith Jarvis Thomson's argument for the permissibility of abortion. I argue that these responses fail because a parallel argument can be constructed for the permissibility of infanticide. However, an argument on the grounds of a right to choose to become a parent can maintain that abortion is permissible but infanticide is not by recognizing the normative significance and nature of parenthood. -/- Certaines réponses aux analogies entre l'avortement (...) et l'infanticide font appel à l'argument de Judith Jarvis Thomson en faveur de la licéité morale de l'avortement pour désamorcer ces analogies. Je soutiens que ces réponses échouent parce qu'un argument parallèle peut être construit en faveur de la licéité de l'infanticide. Cependant, un argument reposant sur le droit de choisir de devenir parent permet de soutenir que l'avortement est autorisé mais que l'infanticide ne l'est pas en reconnaissant le sens et la nature normatifs de la parentalité. (shrink)

Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva's controversial article ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’ has received a lot of criticism since its publishing. Part of the recent criticism has been made by pro-life philosopher Christopher Kaczor, who argues against infanticide in his updated book ‘Ethics of Abortion’. Kaczor makes four arguments to show where Giubilini and Minerva's argument for permitting infanticide goes wrong. In this article I argue that Kaczor's arguments, and some similar arguments presented by other philosophers, (...) are mistaken and cannot show Giubilini and Minerva's view to be flawed. I claim that if one wants to reject the permissibility of infanticide, one must find better arguments for doing so. (shrink)

[From Euthanasia to Infanticide] The paper revisits the recent controversy over Dr. Mitlőhner’s defense of infanticide, published in this journal. In section 1, I point out the weaknesses of Mitlőhner’s paper. In sections 2 and 3 I turn to the most sophisticated defense of infanticide on offer today, that of Peter Singer’s. Section 2 sums up Singer’s description of the medical practice as already having abandoned the traditional ethic of equal value of all human lives, which motivates (...) ethical revisionism. However, an explicit justification of a revision is necessary. This is the job of Singer’s Replacement Argument, examined in section 3. I argue that this justification of infanticide in completely impersonal terms fails. In section 4, I reject it in favor of Ronald Dworkin’s distinction between experiential interests, possessed by infants, and critical interests that develop later. Hence, neonatal euthanasia can sometimes be justified in terms of a newborn‘s own interests (presumably, to relieve its suffering), not in impersonal terms. The only exception is those infants that lack any capacity for cognitive activity whatsoever, and who thus lack even experiential interests. It is an open question whether their “life” differs from death, and whether by killing them we perform infanticide. (shrink)

Nicole Hassoun and Uriah Kriegel defend the position that infanticide is morally permissible because an infant a few days old does not have a self-concept and thus is not a person. I argue their position is flawed and cannot principally rule out the possible permissibility of slavery.

1. First there is an outline of the libertarian approach taken here. 2. On the assumption of personhood, it is explained how there need be no overall inflicted harm and no proactive killing with abortion and infanticide. This starts with an attached-adult analogy and transitions to dealing directly with the issues. Various well-known criticisms are answered throughout. 3. There is then a more-abstract explanation of how it is paradoxical to assume a duty to do more than avoid inflicting overall (...) harm and, instead, positively benefit. A putative counterexample is explained away. 4. A positive theory of intellectual personhood is defended in principle, but not made precise, which is sufficient to be practical. The greater moral value of intellectual-personhood is defended. An important putative reductio of the potential-personhood argument is refuted. 5. Several further criticisms that apply to both types of defences are answered. 6. Conclusion. (shrink)

The paper presents an analysis of the ethics of abortion and infanticide. The work considers two main approaches: the argument of J.J. Thomson on the right to use his body and the absence of responsibilities regarding the fetus, and the argument about the difference in the moral status of the fetus and the adult, which are used both in the argumentation of supporters and opponents of abortion. The paper shows the fallacy of the first approach, and also, in order (...) for the second approach to remain internally consistent, we must agree that infanticide is permissible. (shrink)

Concerning abortion and infanticide, ethics has always seen to each one as quite puzzling an issue. The dilemma expectedly goes like this: “Are they morally good, permissible or acceptable, or are they not?” All three major approaches in ethics, viz. virtue ethics, deontology and consequentialism, have fervently exerted themselves in order to settle both. A virtue ethicist is expected to approach the issue wondering: “Is performing abortion and infanticide indicative of virtues, to wit of character traits that the (...) virtuous agent possesses?” A deontologist would bring the dilemma up for discussion asking: “Is conducting abortion and infanticide in accordance with some moral rule or principle?” To an act utilitarian, on the other hand, the same question would strike as: “Do abortion and infanticide promote the best consequences, to wit those in which happiness is maximized?” All three approaches have been applied to the subject matter ever since the classic era, sadly with no remarkable success and, most of the times, even without the slightest suspicion of the promised rigor. (shrink)

Joona Räsänen has argued that pro‐life arguments against the permissibility of infanticide are not persuasive, and fail to show it to be immoral. We responded to Räsänen’s arguments, concluding that his critique of pro‐life arguments was misplaced. Räsänen has recently replied in ‘Why pro‐life arguments still are not convincing: A reply to my critics’, providing some additional arguments as to why he does not find pro‐life arguments against infanticide convincing. Here, we respond briefly to Räsänen’s critique of the (...) substance view, and also to his most important claim: that possession of a right to life by an infant does not rule out the permissibility of infanticide. We demonstrate that this claim is unfounded, and conclude that Räsänen has not refuted pro‐life arguments against infanticide. (shrink)

The rapid development of artificial womb technologies means that we must consider if and when it is permissible to kill the human subject of ectogestation—recently termed a ‘gestateling’ by Elizabeth Chloe Romanis—prior to ‘birth’. We describe the act of deliberately killing the gestateling as gestaticide, and argue that there are good reasons to maintain that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide, which we consider to be morally impermissible. First, we argue that gestaticide is harder to justify than abortion, primarily (...) because the gestateling is completely independent of its biological parents. Second, we argue that gestaticide is morally equivalent to infanticide. To demonstrate this, we explain that gestatelings are born in a straightforward sense, which entails that killing them is infanticide. However, to strengthen our overall claim, we also show that if gestatelings are not considered to have been born, killing them is still equivalent to killing neonates with congenital anomalies and disabilities, which again is infanticide. We conclude by considering how our discussion of gestaticide has implications for the permissibility of withdrawing life-sustaining treatment from gestatelings. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Giubilini and Minerva argue for the moral permissibility of what they call ‘after-birth abortion’, or infanticide. Here I suggest that they actually employ a confusion of two distinct arguments: one relying on the purportedly identical moral status of a fetus and a newborn, and the second giving an independent argument for the denial of moral personhood to infants (independent of whatever one might say about fetuses). After distinguishing these arguments, I suggest that neither one is (...) capable of supporting Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion. The first argument is at best neutral between permitting infanticide and prohibiting abortion, and may in fact more strongly support the latter. The second argument, I suggest, contains an ambiguity in its key premise, and can be shown to fail on either resolution of that ambiguity. Hence, I conclude that Giubilini and Minerva have not demonstrated the permissibility of infanticide, or even great moral similarity between abortion and infanticide. (shrink)

I argued in ‘Pro‐life arguments against infanticide and why they are not convincing’ that arguments presented by pro‐life philosophers are mistaken and cannot show infanticide to be immoral. Several scholars have offered responses to my arguments. In this paper, I reply to my critics: Daniel Rodger, Bruce P. Blackshaw and Clinton Wilcox. I also reply to Christopher Kaczor. I argue that pro‐life arguments still are not convincing.

Editorial on papers relating to among other infanticide and intersex.

Bobier and Omelianchuk argue that the Birth Strategy for addressing analogies between abortion and infanticide is saddled with a dilemma. It must be accepted that non-therapeutic late-term abortions are either, impermissible, or they are not. If accepted, then the Birth Strategy is undermined. If not, then the highly unintuitive claim that non-therapeutic late-term abortions are permissible must be accepted. I argue that the moral principle employed to defend the claim that non-therapeutic late-term abortions are morally impermissible fails to do (...) so. Furthermore, the principle that people have a right to bodily autonomy can be used as an argument for the conclusion that non-therapeutic late-term abortions are permissible and is intuitively stronger than the intuition for the opposite of this conclusion. This is because people having a right to bodily autonomy explains the impermissibility of rape and sexual assault. Consequently, the posited dilemma is defused and does not undermine the Birth Strategy. (shrink)

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)

Don Marquis argues that his “future of value” account of the ethics of killing affords us a persuasive argument against abortion that avoids difficult questions about the moral status of the fetus. I argue that Marquis’ account is missing essential detail required for the claimed plausibility of the argument and that any attempt to provide this needed detail can be expected to undercut the claim of plausibility. I argue that this is the case because attempts to provide the missing detail (...) are tantamount to accounts of moral status of the sort Marquis claims to avoid and can therefore be expected to have all the familiar problems of such accounts. Finally, I consider the standard problem infanticide poses for a familiar model of personhood and argue that Marquis’ use of this objection as ablanket criticism of personhood accounts is superficial. (shrink)

It is often assumed that if the fetus is a person, then abortion should be illegal. Thomson1 laid the groundwork to challenge this assumption, and Boonin2 has recently argued that it is false: he argues that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. In this article, I explain both Thomson’s and Boonin’s reason for thinking that abortion should be legal even if the fetus is a person. After this, I show that Thomson’s and Boonin’s argument for (...) legalised abortion fail; they have not given us good reason for thinking abortion should be legal.1 Finally, I argue that—if we play Boonin’s game—abortion should be illegal. When discussing the ethics and politics of abortion, whether the fetus is a person is usually central.3 4.2 However, Thomson1 long ago challenged this view. She argued that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person. To do so, she asks us to consider a case in which you are non-consensually taken to a hospital and hooked up to a famous violinist. The violinist, if he is to survive, needs to filter his blood through your body. After 9 months, he will be fine and you can unplug yourself and go on your way. If you unplug yourself prior to this, however, he will die. Is it permissible to unplug yourself? Thomson thinks the answer is ‘yes’. And this, she thinks, shows that abortion is permissible even if the fetus is a person. While the majority of her article focuses on the ethics of abortion, it is clear that she also aims to show that abortion should be legal if the fetus is a person; she would no doubt reject the view that the state is right to coerce you into …. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a recent paper by Bobier and Omelianchuk in which they argue that the critics of Giubilini and Minerva’s defence of infanticide fail to adequately justify a moral difference at birth. They argue that such arguments would lead to an intuitively less plausible position: that late-term abortions are permissible, thus creating a dilemma for those who seek to argue that birth matters. I argue that the only way to resolve this dilemma, is to bite (...) the naturalist bullet and accept that the intuitively plausible idea that birth constitutes a morally relevant event is simply mistaken and biologically misinformed. (shrink)

The argument for the moral permissibility of killing newborns is a challenge to liberal positions on abortion because it can be considered a reductio of their defence of abortion. Here I defend the liberal stance on abortion by arguing that the argument for the moral permissibility of killing newborns on ground of the social, psychological and economic burden on the parents recently put forward by Giubilini and Minerva is not valid; this is because they fail to show that newborns cannot (...) be harmed and because there are morally relevant differences between fetuses and newborns. (shrink)

A -/- abortion and infanticide/ academic freedom/ academics/ action/ act-omission doctrine/ addiction and dependence/ adoption/ advertising/ affirmative action/ age of consent/ age of criminal responsibility/ age of majority/ agent/ aggression/ agriculture/ aid, foreign/ AIDS/ air/ akrasia/ allies/ altruism/ American Civil War (1861-1865)/ American exceptionalism/ American War of Independence (1775–1783)/ anarchic social order/ anarcho-capitalism/ anarchy/ animal rights/ animal welfare/ apartheid/ apathy/ appeasement/ apriorism/ aristocracy/ arms trade/ arms race/ artificial intelligence/ arts and sciences/ assassination/ asset stripping/ asylum seekers/ atomism, social/ Austrian (...) School of economics/ authoritarianism/ authority/ autonomy, intellectual/ axis/ -/- B -/- balance of trade/ balance of power (international)/ banking/ bankruptcy, insolvency, and limited liability/ barriers to entry/ begging/ belief/ betting/ big business/ bigotry/ biodiversity/ bioethics/ black market/ blackmail/ blasphemy/ booms and slumps/ borders, political/ boxing and dangerous sports/ boycott/ bribery/ British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)/ BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy)/ bureaucracy/ business cycles/ . (shrink)

Michael Hauskeller (“Reflections from a Troubled Stream: Giubliani and Minerva on ‘After-Birth Abortion’) has recently suggested that we should resist rationalist tendencies in moral discourse: “[I]s not all morality ultimately irrational? Even the most strongly held moral convictions can be shown to lack a rational basis.” (Hauskeller 2012, p. 18) Hauskeller was responding to Alberto Giubliani and Francesca Minverva’s (2012) recent defense of the permissibility of killing infants, but his anti-rationality arguments have wide-reaching implications. Yet pace Hauskeller, rationality is indeed (...) of crucial importance to any ethical argument. We should not abandon rationality for the sake of refuting one discomforting hypothesis; instead, rationality must be rigorously employed, here and elsewhere, in the search for the truth. (shrink)

Though this volume is a bit dated, there are few recent popular books dealing specifically with the psychology of murder and it’s a quick overview available for a few dollars, so still well worth the effort. It makes no attempt to be comprehensive and is somewhat superficial in places, with the reader expected to fill in the blanks from his many other books and the vast literature on violence. For an update see e.g., Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology 2nd (...) ed. V1 (2016) p 265, 266, 270–282, 388–389, 545–546, 547, 566 and Buss, Evolutionary Psychology 5th ed. (2015) p 26, 96–97,223, 293-4, 300, 309–312, 410 and Shackelford and Hansen, The Evolution of Violence (2014) He has been among the top evolutionary psychologists for several decades and covers a wide range of behavior in his works, but here he concentrates almost entirely on the psychological mechanisms that cause individual people to murder and their possible evolutionary function in the EEA (Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation—i.e., the plains of Africa during the last million years or so). -/- Buss starts by noting that as with other behaviors, ‘alternative’ explanations such as psychopathology, jealousy, social environment, group pressures, drugs and alcohol etc. do not really explain, since the question still remains as to why these produce homicidal impulses, i.e., they are the proximate causes and not the ultimate evolutionary (genetic) ones. As always, it inevitably boils down to inclusive fitness (kin selection), and so to the struggle for access to mates and resources, which is the ultimate explanation for all behavior in all organisms. Sociological data (and common sense) make it clear that younger poorer males are the most likely to kill. He presents his own and others homicide data from industrialized nations, and tribal cultures, conspecific killing in animals, archeology, FBI data and his own research into normal people's homicidal fantasies. Much archeological evidence continues to accumulate of murders, including that of whole groups, or of groups minus young females, in prehistoric times. -/- After surveying Buss’s comments, I present a very brief summary of intentional psychology (the logical structure of rationality), which is covered extensively in my many other articles and books. -/- Those with a lot of time who want a detailed history of homicidal violence from an evolutionary perspective may consult Steven Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature Why Violence Has Declined’(2012), and my review of it easily available on the net and in two of my recent ebooks. Briefly, Pinker notes that murder has decreased steadily and dramatically by a factor of about 30 since our days as foragers. So, even though guns now make it extremely easy for anyone to kill, homicide is much less common. Pinker thinks this is due to various social mechanisms that bring out our ‘better angels’, but I think it’s due mainly to the temporary abundance of resources from the merciless rape of our planet, coupled with increased police presence, with communication and surveillance and legal systems that make it far more likely to be punished. This becomes clear every time there is even a brief and local absence of the police. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems of thought viewpoint may consult my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in more of my writings on psychology may see Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century--Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization 392p (2017). For all my writings in their most recent versions, please consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed. 686p (2017). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX -/- . (shrink)

Giubilini and Minerva argue that the permissibility of abortion entails the permissibility of infanticide. Proponents of what we refer to as the Birth Strategy claim that there is a morally significant difference brought about at birth that accounts for our strong intuition that killing newborns is morally impermissible. We argue that strategy does not account for the moral intuition that late-term, non-therapeutic abortions are morally impermissible. Advocates of the Birth Strategy must either judge non-therapeutic abortions as impermissible in the (...) later stages of pregnancy or conclude that they are permissible on the basis of premises that are far less intuitively plausible than the opposite conclusion and its supporting premises. (shrink)

1000 time-travelers travel back in time, each with the intention of killing their own infant-self. If there is no branching time, then on pain of bringing about a logical contradiction, all must fail. But this seems inexplicable: what is to ensure that the time-travelers are stopped? For a time, this inexplicability objection was thought to provide evidence that there is something incoherent about the possibility of backwards time travel in a universe without branching time. There is now near-consensus, however, that (...) the objection has no bite: there is nothing inexplicable about the mass failure. Lewis, Sider and Ismael independently argue that since it is built into the description of the class of cases considered that the time-travelers must fail – and so we consider only unsuccessful attempts – there is no mystery. Smith argues that the absence of possible worlds at which auto-infanticide is committed suffices as a complete explanation for the failures. And Baron and Colyvan maintain that available causal and logical explanations jointly account for everything that needs accounting for. I argue that these are wrong. There is remaining, problematic inexplicability. For backwards time travel not to lead to logical contradiction, something would need to do logic’s bidding, after all. (shrink)

I defend a relational account of difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns. The difference in moral status between a fetus and a newborn is that the newborn baby is the proper object of ‘parental responsibility’ whereas the fetus is not. ‘Parental responsibilities’ are a moral dimension of a ‘parent-child relation’, a relation which newborn babies stand in, but fetuses do not. I defend this relational account by analyzing the concepts of ‘parent’ and ‘child’, and conclude that the (...) difference in the moral status between fetuses and newborns means one may claim abortion is morally permissible while also claiming infanticide is not morally permissible, without inconsistency between the two claims. (shrink)

I defend the right to an abortion at any stage of pregnancy by drawing on a Kantian account of consent and innate right. I examine how pregnant women are positioned in moral and legal debates about abortion, and develop a Kanitan account of bodily autonomy in order to pregnant women’s epistemic authority over the experience of pregnancy. Second, I show how Kant's distinction between innate and private right offers an excellent legal framework for embodied rights, including abortion and sexual consent, (...) and I draw on the legal definition of sexual consent in order to show how abortion discourse undermines women's innate right. I then explore Kant’s treatment of the infanticidal mother, and draw out the parallels between this case and contemporary abortion rights in order to develop a distinctly Kantian framework of reproductive rights in non-ideal conditions. Finally, I explore the implications of this non-ideal approach for contemporary abortion discourse, arguing that debates about the legality of abortion should more broadly engage the barbaric conditions of reproductive injustice. (shrink)

A few months after the publication of the French translation of his book Causing Death and Saving Lives, Jonathan Glover was kind enough to return to some of the theses defended in this book. In forty years, this work has become a classic of applied ethics in the English-speaking world. Glover tackled a series of questions involving the lives of men and women, including abortion, infanticide, suicide, euthanasia, the death penalty and war. We asked him here about the method (...) he considers the best in moral philosophy, and returned to his criticism of certain dominant ideas at the time. Jonathan Glover also discusses some of the positions of his former students Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. (shrink)

In this article, I present a novel argument against abortion. In short, what makes it wrong to kill someone is that they are a counterfactual person; counterfactual persons are individuals such that, were they not killed, they would have been persons. My view accommodates two intuitions which many views concerning the wrongness of killing fail to account for: embryo rescue cases and the impermissibility of infanticide. The view avoids embryo rescue cases because embryos in the rescue scenarios are not (...) counterfactual people: they are not counterfactual people because it is false to say that, were they not killed, they would have been persons. As a result, it does not follow from my account that there is a prohibition against allowing embryos to die. On the other hand, infants are counterfactual people: an infant is an individual such that, were she not killed, she would have been a person. (shrink)

I provide an updated version of The Impairment Argument against abortion and respond to numerous objections that can be (and have been) raised to it.

In this commentary, I will consider the implications of the argument made by Christopher Stratman (2020) in ‘Ectogestation and the Problem of Abortion’. Clearly, the possibility of ectogestation will have some effect on the ethical debate on abortion. However, I have become increasingly sceptical that the possibility of ectogestation will transform the problem of abortion. Here, I outline some of my reasons to justify this scepticism. First, that virtually everything we already know about unintended pregnancies, abortion and adoption does not (...) prima facie support the assumption that a large shift to ectogestation would occur. Moreover, if ectogestation does not lead to significant restrictions to abortion then there is unlikely to be any radical transformation of the practice of abortion. Second, abortion is already associated with stigma and so the presence of ectogestation would need to create additional stigma to modify behaviour. Finally, I argue that ectogestation shifts the debate away from the fetus to the human subject of the artificial womb—the gestateling. Therefore, creating a new category of killing—gestaticide—and this would only reorient the debate rather than end it. (shrink)

The paper begins with a description of a grey seal performing conspecific infanticide. The paper then gives an account of “nobleness” and “brutishness.” Roughly, a behavioural-disposition is noble/brutish if it is one that would be a moral virtue/vice if the possessor of the behavioural-disposition were a moral agent. The paper then advances two pairs of axiological claims. The first pair of claims is that nobleness is good and that brutishness is bad. The second pair of claims is about an (...) axiological interaction between nobleness/brutishness and well-being. That any non-human animal lacks well-being is bad. Yet, it is worse that a noble non-human animal lacks well-being, and not so bad that a brutish non-human animal lacks well-being. Lastly, the paper discusses some potential moral implications of these axiological claims, for instance that factory farming is especially wrong because it causes noble non-human animals to lack well-being. (shrink)

I offer a response to an objection to my account of the moral difference between fetuses and newborns, an account that seeks to address an analogy between abortion and infanticide which is based on the apparent equality of moral value of fetuses and newborns.

Conservative and liberal approaches to the problem of abortion are oversimplified and deeply flawed. Accepting that the moral status of the conceptus changes during gestation, the author advances a more nuanced perspective. Through applying a form of rules in practice utilitarianism within the context of overall population policy, he provides a compelling ethical and legal framework for regulating contraception and abortion practices.

In this paper, I respond to criticisms toward my account of the difference in moral status between fetuses and newborns. I show my critics have not adequately argued for their view that pregnant women participate in a parent-child relationship. While an important counterexample is raised against my account, this counterexample had already been dealt with in my original paper. Because the criticisms against my account lack argumentative support, they do not pose a problem for my account. I conclude the raised (...) criticisms do not amount to a strong philosophical case against my account. (shrink)

The most well-known example of the impossibility of traveling in time is the grandfather paradox or self-infanticide argument: a person who travels in the past and kills his own grandfather, thus preventing the existence of one of his parents and thus his own existence. A philosophical response to this paradox would be the impossibility of changing the past, like Novikov self-consistency principle (if an event exists that would cause a paradox or any "change" to the past whatsoever, then the (...) probability of that event is zero, thus it would be impossible to create time paradoxes). DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.31279.79521. (shrink)

About 550 years ago, Nanakian philosophy emerged with the advent of Guru Nanak (1469‐1539). It is sad to note that the present human society is still suffering from the same ills, which were prevalent at the time of the birth of Guru Nanak. Punjab, the birthplace of Nanakian Philosophy, is at present suffering from rampant practices of bribery and corruption, widespread usage of intoxicants/ narcotics, infanticide, and exploitation of weaker sections of society. It is in direct violation of the (...) basic tenets of the Nanakian Philosophy. Not only this, Guru Nanak urged us to live in harmony with nature. However, Punjabi community has over‐exploited the natural resources of the state, resulting in deforestation, soil, air and water pollution, and damage to its water table. Besides, there is a proliferation of numerous sects all around. Rituals and vain practices rule the roost in religious affairs. Such activities of Punjabi people are in direct conflict with the teachings of Guru Nanak. Thereby Sikhs have failed to implement Nanakian philosophy in its true essence. It is dire need of the hour to apply the quintessence of Nanakian philosophy, in all spheres of our life. (shrink)

L'exemple le plus connu de l'impossibilité de voyager dans le temps est le paradoxe du grand-père ou l'argument de l'auto-infanticide: une personne qui voyage dans le passé et tue son propre grand-père, empêchant ainsi l'existence d'un de ses parents et donc sa propre existence. Une réponse philosophique à ce paradoxe serait l'impossibilité de changer le passé, (à l'instar du principe de cohérence de Novikov. Le paradoxe du grand-père implique toute action qui change le passé. Il se présente sous de (...) nombreuses variantes. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14587.26409. (shrink)

Lars von Trier's works give us allways plenty of exquisite philosophical food for thought, mostly in very dense and hermetic language. 'Melancholia' , a 2011 movie, has been seen by us as a brilliant dramatization of Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's philosophy, also available on PhilArchives. 'Antichrist', another movies of his from 2009, deploys a similar doom perspective regarding our times, now focusing the perpetual struggle between men and women as a leitomotiv. This brief review, however, does not intend to go beyond (...) an exposition of the mental structures which grounds both so different reactions: the husband's, and the wife's. (shrink)

Les récits de fiction comportant une moralité déviante posent parfois problème quant à la détermination de ce qui est « vrai dans l’histoire ». Si par exemple on a aucune difficulté à considérer comme vrai dans le monde imaginaire que « Giselda a tué son bébé », les choses sont différentes lorsqu’il s’agit d’imaginer une situation dans laquelle nos valeurs morales sont remises en question. Confronté à un récit comportant l’énoncé « Giselda a fait la bonne chose en tuant son (...) bébé, après tout, c’était une fille », on aura tendance à questionner l’autorité de l’auteur : celui-ci peut bien penser que l’infanticide féminin est moralement justifié, mais en fait c’est faux, même dans l’histoire. Les conditions qui donnent lieu au phénomène ont été articulées de diverses façons, l’objectif étant habituellement de parvenir à une formulation qui dépasse le cadre plus étroitement moral. On invoque par exemple une distinction plus générale entre l’évaluatif et le descriptif. Après avoir caractérisé plus précisément les notions d’imagination et d’imaginabilité, j’exami- nerai brièvement la littérature sur le sujet et défendrai une solution reposant sur les règles de modification de l’extension et de l’intension des prédicats imaginaires. D’après cette analyse, ce qui se produit dans les récits moraux déviants s’explique par un principe plus général qui s’applique autant à l’évaluatif qu’au descriptif. (shrink)