University of Kansas, Fall 2004
Philosophy 160: Introduction to Ethics
Ben Eggleston—eggleston@ku.edu

Lecture notes: applied ethics

The following notes correspond roughly to what we cover, including at least a portion of what I put on the board or the screen, in class. In places they may be more or less comprehensive than what we actually cover in class, and should not be taken as a substitute for your own observations and records of what goes on in class.

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  1. Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”
    1. the main argument
      1. first premise: “suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care are bad” (p. 231.2)
      2. second premise—one of the following two statements:
        1. “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it” (p. 231.4)
        2. “if it is in our power to prevent something very bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant, we ought, morally, to do it” (p. 231.7)
        3. (Notice that the second principle is less demanding than the first, because it requires action only to prevent something very bad from happening, not just something bad, and because it lets one off the hook when anything of moral significance would have to be sacrificed, not just anything of comparable moral significance.
      3. conclusion: We (in affluent countries) are wrong to do so little to help those in need.
    2. objections to second premise considered
      1. its indifference to proximity/distance
      2. the large number of people doing nothing to help
    3. an implication of the conclusion: the line between duty and charity is not where we think it is, or act like it is (p. 235.3)
    4. two further objections considered
      1. first objection
        1. objection: This way of distinguishing between duty and charity is not how most people think. (That is, this is not in accord with common-sense morality.)
        2. reply: The way most people think (indeed common-sense morality) needs to be revised
      2. second objection
        1. objection: This way of distinguishing between duty and charity implies that we should be doing all we can to relieve suffering.
        2. reply: This implication may well be true, however uncomfortable it is.
    5. some practical objections considered
      1. first objection
        1. objection: Shouldn’t we abstain from giving privately, to induce governments to take responsibility?
        2. reply: No, because governments are then likely to assume the citizens are not interested in providing such relief.
      2. second objection
        1. objection: Won’t famine relief now just lead to greater famine later?
        2. reply: If so, then we are obligated to help with population control, not just ignore the problem altogether.
      3. third objection
        1. objection: Won’t large-scale famine relief harm the worldwide economy?
        2. reply: If so, then we are obligated to take this into account when ascertaining the ideal amount to give—it is not a license to keep giving around 1 percent, as most western societies do.
  2. Singer, “Who Deserves the 9/11 Cash Pile?”
    1. $1.3 billion raised for victims of 9/11/01, including $353 million for 400 uniformed personnel
    2. more than 100,000 people dying daily due to caused related to extreme poverty
    3. justification for lack of help for non-Americans dying of poverty?
  3. Johnson, “Unspeakable Conversations”
    1. Singer’s conception of personhood
      1. awareness of self, awareness of self’s existence over time, preferences regarding the future
      2. Human beings and other organisms lacking these are not persons, and thus do not have the right to life.
    2. whether the disabled are worse off
      1. Singer
        1. alleges a negative correlation between disability and quality of life
        2. does not say that every disabled person is worse off than every non-disabled person
        3. does not say that every disabled person is worse off than he or she would have been if he or she had not been disabled
      2. Johnson
        1. alleges that disabled persons’ quality of life cannot be meaningfully compared to non-disabled persons’ quality of life
        2. claims that many of disabled persons’ problems are due to attitudes of others (such as pity)
    3. infanticide
      1. for: infants are not yet persons, so they can be killed if their parents so choose
      2. against: sanctity of life, lack of sharp line between persons and non-persons
    4. euthanasia / assisted suicide
      1. for: diminishing suffering, allowing free choice by patients
      2. against: sanctity of life, lack of really free choice if society expects certain patients to choose to die
  4. Marquis, “Why Abortion Is Immoral”
    1. underlying assumption of paper
      1. “whether or not abortion is morally permissible stands or falls on whether or not a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end” (p. 183.4)
      2. suggested structure of argument
        1. If a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end, then abortion is immoral.
        2. A fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end.
        3. Therefore, abortion is immoral.
      3. what to look for: an argument for premise 2
    2. section I
      1. strategy for proving that a fetus is the sort of being whose life it is seriously wrong to end: abjure generalizations such as “It is wrong to kill a human being” and “It is wrong to kill beings with [such-and-such] psychological properties”
      2. instead, figure out what’s wrong with killing “adult human beings such as ourselves” and then see whether fetuses resemble us in this respect (p. 189.3)
    3. section II
      1. p. 190.2: main claim: What makes killing an adult human being prima facie seriously wrong is the loss of that person’s future.
      2. considerations in support of this claim
        1. It implies that aliens who have futures like ours would also be beings whom it would be wrong to kill.
        2. It implies that it might be wrong to kill certain nonhuman animals.
        3. It implies that active euthanasia can be all right in certain cases.
        4. It implies that it is prima facie seriously wrong to kill children and infants.
      3. a caveat
        1. Note that Marquis is not claiming that the fact that his claim has these implications is proof that it’s true. He is aware that not only true statements, but false ones too, can have attractive implications (as we might take the foregoing to be).
        2. But the fact that his claim does have these appealing implications is some evidence in its favor.
      4. implications of this claim for the abortion issue
        1. A fetus has a future like ours.
        2. Therefore, is is prima facie seriously morally wrong to kill a fetus.
      5. analogy with a position on another issue
        1. the position on the other issue
          1. The wanton infliction of pain on an adult human being is prima facie wrong.
          2. What makes it wrong is that it causes suffering.
          3. The wanton infliction of pain on an animal also causes suffering.
          4. Therefore, the wanton infliction of pain on an animal is also prima facie wrong.
        2. Marquis’s position on abortion
          1. The killing of an adult human being is prima facie seriously wrong.
          2. What makes it prima facie seriously wrong is that it prevents a future of value from occurring.
          3. Abortion also prevents a future of value from occurring.
          4. Therefore, abortion is also prima facie seriously wrong.
    4. section III: debunking two rival accounts of why killing is normally bad
      1. the desire account
        1. the account and its implications for abortion
          1. What’s wrong with killing is that it normally frustrates the desires of the person killed.
          2. Fetuses (of a certain level of development, at least—maybe all of them) have no desires.
          3. Therefore, it’s not wrong to kill them.
        2. Marquis’s two objections
          1. This account conflicts with common-sense morality, because it implies that it’s o.k. to kill people who no longer desire to live, such as people who are tired of life or who are suicidal.
          2. This account gets things backwards: it implies that life is good because we desire it, when in fact “The goodness of life is not secondary to our desire for it” (p. 196.2).
      2. the discontinuation account
        1. the account and its implications for abortion
          1. What’s wrong with killing is that it discontinues one’s activities, experiences, and projects.
          2. Fetuses (of a certain level of development, at least—maybe all of them) don’t have activities, experiences, and projects.
          3. Therefore, it’s not wrong to kill them.
        2. Marquis’s reply
          1. The discontinuation account would seem to imply that active euthanasia, even at the request of a patient who is in great pain, is immoral.
          2. If the discontinuation account is modified to allow for this, then it must be because of the quality of the person’s future (its very poor quality).
          3. But then the idea of discontinuation isn’t doing any work. The discontinuation account has been reduced to the future-like-ours account.
    5. section IV: debunking other accounts
    6. section V: showing that the future-like-ours view does not imply the immorality of contraception
    7. section VI: conclusion
  5. Cudd, “Sensationalized Philosophy: A Reply to Marquis’s “Why Abortion Is Immoral” ”
    1. goal
      1. Recall that Marquis’s paper is all about the moral status of the fetus. He does not talk about any arguments against abortion based on other considerations, such as protecting the rights of women, making sure we follow God’s commands, or making sure our planet stays populated with humans.
      2. Recall also that, as Cudd notes, Marquis claims that in the philosophical literature on abortion, the moral status of the fetus is typically the determining factor in the moral permissibility of abortion.
      3. Cudd aims to show that the moral permissibility of abortion depends on other things than the moral status of the fetus, and that the philosophical literature on abortion reflects this fact.
    2. important claims
      1. You have to consider the “compelling bundle of rights on the side of the woman carrying the fetus” (p. 262.8).
      2. Consider the case of self-defense. Murderers have futures of value, so is killing a murderer (in self-defense) as bad as killing a fetus? Marquis would appear to have to treat the two cases equally (p. 263.2).
      3. The authors that Marquis cites say that a woman’s rights can override a fetus’s rights (p. 263.4).
      4. All Marquis shows is “Why Abortion is Killing a Being-Like-Us,” not why it is immoral (p. 264.7).
  6. Marquis’s guest lecture on his paper
    1. classic anti-abortion view
      1. the view
        1. What gives us the right to life is that we’re human.
        2. So, it’s wrong to take a human life.
        3. Fetuses are alive and human.
        4. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
      2. problems
        1. It is unclear how a biological property (the property of being human) is sufficient for a moral property (the property of having the right to life).
        2. This view would seem to imply that other living human things, such as sperm, eggs, and human cancer cells, also have the right to life. But this is very counter-intuitive.
        3. This view fails to explain the wrongness of killing non-human creatures like us, such as aliens that we might think of as friends of ours.
    2. classic pro-choice view
      1. the view
        1. What gives us the right to life is that we’re persons.
        2. Fetuses aren’t yet persons.
        3. So, it’s not wrong to kill them.
      2. problems
        1. It is unclear how a psychological property (the property of being a person) is sufficient for a moral property (the property of having the right to life).
        2. This view fails to explain the wrongness of killing infants.
    3. Future Like Ours view
      1. the view
        1. What gives us the right to life is that we have futures of value—i.e., that our futures will be valuable to us.
        2. So, it’s wrong to kill something that has a future of value.
        3. Fetuses have futures of value.
        4. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
      2. problems solved
        1. right to life
          1. adults
          2. children
          3. infants
          4. individuals in temporary comas or suffering from depression
          5. some animals, possibly (if they are deemed to have a future like ours)
        2. no right to life
          1. cancer cells
          2. individuals in permanent comas
          3. individuals in severe, untreatable pain
      3. when it might be o.k. to kill someone (even if he or she has a future like ours)
        1. self-defense, war, capital punishment
        2. So the FLO view is not meant to say that all killing is wrong, just that killing a fetus is as bad as killing a normal adult.
      4. Why do eggs and sperm not have the right to life?
        1. It might be thought that the FLO view would imply that eggs and sperm have the right to life, on the grounds that they have futures like ours.
        2. But they do not have futures like ours, since they are not not the same individuals that they combine to form: the egg from which an adult human is formed is not the same individual as that human, and neither is the sperm. 
  7. ethics and genetics: Gattaca
    1. genetic discrimination in employment
      1. for: Genes may affect job performance.
      2. against: People cannot control what genes they have.
    2. prenatal genetic testing for diseases
      1. for: planning one’s future
      2. against: living with burden of bad news
    3. using another person’s identity to get a job
      1. against: a form of dishonesty