PHL 111 Lecture 14: PHL 111 - Lecture 14

• School: Tunxis Community College
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHL 111
• Professor: Minor

Document Summary

Often thought that it violates the sanctity of life. The idea here is that life has intrinsic or inherent goodness, and that killing someone robs them of this inherent goodness. Glover: killing is not intrinsically wrong, but it is directly wrong; i. e. wrong for the person who is killed. Glover: this commits us to pacifism, yet non-pacifists can also agree that taking life is wrong. Glover: while someone who believes in the sanctity of life must believe that killing is directly wrong, not everyone who thinks that killing is sometimes or always directly wrong has to hold that life is sacred. Glover: only makes sense to talk of electrical brain activity if we first assume that the person is conscious. So, irreversible loss of consciousness seems to be the correct standard for determining death. However, we might feel we have to add to this, and include something like the irreversible loss of respiratory and circulatory activity in the body.