Do fetuses have a right to life in virtue of the fact that they are potential adult human beings? I take the claim that the fetus is a potential adult human being to come to this: if the fetus grows normally there will be an adult human animal that was once the fetus. Does this fact ground a claim to our care and protection? A great deal hangs on the answer to this question. The actual mental and physical capacities of a human fetus are inferior to those of adult creatures generally thought to lack a serious right to life (e.g., adult chickens), and the mere fact that a fetus belongs to our species in particular seems morally irrelevant. Consequently, a strong fetal claim to protection rises or falls with the appeal to the fetus's potentiality, for nothing else can justify it.
Significantly greater stability was noted in the cervical rod construct during nondestructive and destructive flexural testing.
Contextualists offer "high-low standards" practical cases to show that a variety of knowledge standards are in play in different ordinary contexts. These cases show nothing of the sort, I maintain. However Keith DeRose gives an ingenious argument that standards for knowledge do go up in high-stakes cases. According to the knowledge account of assertion (Kn), only knowledge warrants assertion. Kn combined with the context sensitivity of assertability yields contextualism about knowledge.
This is a version of an example from Alan Gibbard (1975): we make a statue by joining two pieces of clay; then we smash the piece, destroying the statue too. 1 Why Counterpart Theory and Four-Dimensionalism are Incompatible Suppose that God creates ex nihilo a bronze statue of a unicorn; later he annihilates it (call this 'scenario I'). 1 The statue and the piece of bronze occupy the same space for their entire career. If God had recast the bronze as a mermaid, the piece of bronze, not the statue, would have survived. As nothing can have and lack the capacity to survive the same change, they are distinct. Yet many philosophers find it incredible that two material things coincide ever, not to mention for their entire career.Four-dimensionalists hold that ordinary objects persist by having temporal parts at different times. This helps fourdimensionalists handle a number of cases of apparent coincidence.If God recasts the statue instead of annihilating it, for instance, the four-dimensionalist maintains that the space-time worm which is the unicorn statue is a proper part of a more temporally extended worm: the piece of bronze. As the bronze and the statue merely share a common part, coincidence is avoided.The same strategy avoids coincidence in cases where the bronze precedes the statue, which first exists when the piece of bronze 2 Four dimensionalism also avoids distinct-coincidents in cases where a whole animal is reduced to a proper part of itself, as in the case of the unfortunate cat, Tibbles, and his amputated tail (Geach, 1980); non-coincident space-time worms, a fat one and a thin one, end in a common proper-part.2 is cast into a shape. 2 However four-dimensionalism cannot by itself provide a general solution to coincidence puzzles. In scenario I, the statue and the bronze share all their temporal and spatial parts; hence two whole temporally-extended material things still coincide.Counterpart Theory (CT) offers a solution(Lewis 1986, sect. 4.5; Sider 2001: 113), one that four-dimensionalists tend to embrace. Suppose that in I the statue and the piece of bronze are the same four-dimensional object. The statue cannot survive being recast as a mermaid, the bronze can. According to CT, the first claim is true because no statue-counterpart of the statue is mermaid shaped, and the second is true because the bronze has a mermaid-shaped bronze counterpart. Counterpart relations are similarity relations. As one thing can have resemblance relations to different sets of things, depending on which of its features we emphasize, the fact that the bronze can, but the statue cannot, survive the same change does not entail that they are distinct. There is just one space-time worm, A, lasting from t1 to t10 (the moment of annihilation); the statue and the bronze are identical to A, which has different counterpart relations depending upon which of its features we emphasize. Four-Lewis, David (1986), On the Plurality of Worlds, Basil Blackwell. Sider, T. 2001. Four Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford...
This paper argues that living wills are typically nebulous and confused documents that do not effectively enable you to determine your future treatment. Worse, signing a living will can end your life in ways you never intended, long before you are either incompetent or terminally ill. This danger is compounded by the fact that those who implement living wills are often themselves dangerously confused, so that, for example, they cannot be relied upon to distinguish living wills from DNR orders. In addition, the paper argues that advance directives concerning resuscitation are often so confused that they end the lives of healthy, alert people who have not suffered cardiac or pulmonary arrest. Finally, the paper argues that advance directives establishing durable power of attorney for health care often preserve the chief dangers of living wills. Suggestions are offered as to how you can most effectively direct your future treatment without endangering your life.
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