PHLB07H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Judith Jarvis Thomson, Fetus, Nippon Tv
Document Summary
Week 2 lecture #3: monday january 9, 2017. Abortion and bodily integrity - thomson: a defense of abortion . Critique of the standard debate on abortion and moral status. The goldilocks problem: both sides of the debate tend to appeal to moral principles that are either too broad or too narrow. It is wrong to destroy human life too broad. It is wrong to kill persons too narrow. Fetuses aren"t persons and don"t have the capacity. Not wrong to kill fetuses b/c it"s not a person. Won"t be wrong to kill young children and infants. Further problems: pro-life arguments: either simply assume without argument that the fetus is a human being with moral status or illicitly slides between biological and moral conceptions of human being. ". Can"t assume that fetus aren"t a human being. Smuggle into the argument without being argued for. Tries to provide an argument that doesn"t run into any of these problems (goldilocks, circular reasoning, equivocation & etc. )
