Abortion and the Moral Significance of Merely Possible Persons

Roberts, Melinda A.

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-3792-3

Cited by 14 publications

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“…A person is typically taken to have moral status equivalent in most respects to adult humans with normal capacities but, as Bonnie Steinbock points out, we can mean different things by talking about persons (, 30). Melinda Roberts, for instance, takes a person to be any being with moral status, and so for her a kitten (capable of experiencing pain and pleasure) is a person, whereas an embryo or early fetus (one not yet capable of sentience) is not (, 147). Many would find this way of talking counterintuitive.…”

Section: Social Construction Of Fetal Personhood/moral Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Pregnancy Losses: Multiple Meanings and Moral Considerations

Mullin¹

2015

Journal of Social Philosophy

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Section: Social Construction Of Fetal Personhood/moral Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Pregnancy Losses: Multiple Meanings and Moral Considerations

Mullin¹

2015

Journal of Social Philosophy

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“…15 15 Addition Plus , discussed in below, clearly makes this point, as does Parfit's Jack and Jill case (what I call Double Wrongful Life in Roberts, 2010, ch. 2, and Hare calls a negative symmetrical case in Hare, 2007, p. 504). …”

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confidence: 93%

“…5 5 I consider the question of whether the permissibility of the early abortion can be reconciled against the moral significance of merely possible people in more detail in Roberts (2010). My argument there is that Variabilism easily shows that the two positions are consistent – that we can recognize that the merely possible have exactly the same moral status we ourselves have , but also take the position that the early abortion, the abortion that does not end the life of an existing person but instead causes an additional person not to be brought into existence at all, is perfectly permissible . …”

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confidence: 99%

“…Thus – depending on other facts – the otherwise plausible permissibility theory would presumably require agents to avoid the greater of two morally significant losses. For a more detailed discussion of what the otherwise plausible permissibility theory will look like, see Roberts (2010, pp. 50–58).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…29 29 Other cases constitute more clear‐cut problems for Moral Actualism in both its forms. See Roberts (2010, pp. 60–74); Arrhenius (2009).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The Asymmetry: A Solution

Roberts

2011

Theoria

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The Asymmetry consists of two claims. (A) That a possible person's life would be abjectly miserable –less than worth living – counts against bringing that person into existence. But (B) that a distinct possible person's life would be worth living or even well worth living does not count in favour of bringing that person into existence. In recent years, the view that the two halves of the Asymmetry are jointly untenable has become increasingly entrenched. If we say all persons matter morally whether they exist or not and on that basis try to explain the first half of the Asymmetry, we lose the second half of the Asymmetry. If we say that some persons do not matter morally and some do and on that basis try to explain the second half of the Asymmetry, we lose the first half of the Asymmetry – or else find ourselves with a principle that is either inconsistent or otherwise deeply troubled in some way that has nothing to do with the content of the Asymmetry itself. In this article, I propose an alternative approach to the Asymmetry which I will call Variabilism. By understanding each and every person, whether existing or not, to matter morally but variably– such that the moral significance of any loss incurred by any person is considered to depend, not on who incurs that loss and whether that person matters morally, but rather on where that loss is incurred in relation to the person who incurs it – we can both nicely ground the two halves of the Asymmetry and avoid the conceptual difficulties that have plagued competing approaches.

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Population

Roberts¹

2013

The International Encyclopedia of Ethics

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The choices we make today have consequences for what life will be like for future people, how many future people there will be, and who those future people are. Such quality, quantity , and identity issues – and more besides – fall within the domain of population ethics . A widely accepted goal within moral philosophy is the design of a moral theory that plausibly instructs whether an agent's choice to distribute well‐being across a given population in a given way is morally permissible in light of alternative distributions of well‐being across that same population available to that agent at the critical time. Closely related is the design of a theory that plausibly ranks one such distribution against another in terms of the respective moral value, or degree of goodness, of each. The recognition that drives population ethics is that any adequate moral theory must also take into account that the very choices under evaluation for their permissibility may themselves produce distinct populations – some larger, some smaller, some that overlap in terms of identities of their membership, and some that do not. An adequate moral theory must give a plausible account, in other words, of both “Same People” (and hence “Same Number”) cases and “Different People” (whether “Same Number” or not) cases (Parfit 1987: 356, 351–454; Blackorby et al. 1997, 2005).

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Abortion and the Moral Significance of Merely Possible Persons

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Early Pregnancy Losses: Multiple Meanings and Moral Considerations

Early Pregnancy Losses: Multiple Meanings and Moral Considerations

The Asymmetry: A Solution

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