PHL 406 Lecture Notes - Fetus
14 Nov 2011
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Lecture summary on abortion (marquis) part ii (paul raymont, jan. 28, 2011) So, concludes marquis, the killing of any individual creature is very immoral if it deprives that creature of a similarly valuable future (a future like ours" ). Typically, a fetus, or even an embryo, has a future like ours". Therefore, abortion (the killing of a fetus) is usually seriously immoral. Marquis rejects two rival accounts of what makes the killing of one of us so wrong. The first rival position is the desire theory. On this view, it"s wrong to kill one of us because we generally desire to continue living, and it"s wrong to defeat this desire. Marquis rejects the desire theory on the grounds that it would yield the absurd, unacceptable consequence that we may kill someone who"s under anaesthesia since that person does not at this moment desire anything at all.
