Thoughts on whether fetuses are "potential human beings"

For the purposes of discussion, I had an idea to use an analogy of a comatose patient to explore whether fetuses count as actual human beings or just potential human beings. Granted, the idea is kind of rough so I just wanted to see how it would work in practice.

A comatose patient is identified as a "John Doe", which means the hospital does not know the person's identity.Suppose that he has no attachments to anyone; he has no living relatives or friends, and he is amnesiac. Further suppose that the doctors can reliably speculate that John Doe will emerge from the coma in approximately eight to ten months. However, the costs of treating a comatose patient are relatively high. Should the hospital pull the plug on the comatose patient since no one has any attachments to him? Or should the hospital keep the comatose patient alive?

If you answered that the comatose patient should be kept alive, then presumably you should answer that a fetus should be kept alive as well. As a comatose patient who is amnesiac and without attachment, John Doe is basically like a fetus in the following ways: (i) he has approximately the same limited cognitive functioning more or less (ii) he has no attachments to anyone, (iii) he has no memory of experiences (iv) and if someone killed him, he presumably would not feel much pain.

Perhaps the real issue with abortion are the costs that are imposed on the pregnant woman. If these costs are dealt with, perhaps the issue of aborting fetuses may not be necessary. What if people were legally required to treat pregnant women no different from other women? That is, what if a person could be prosecuted for child abuse if he/she discriminated against a pregnant woman, because it would start a chain of events that would lead to abortion?

What do you think? 

Sophie's Choice

I'm addressing kind of an interesting moral dilemma for my final paper. Basically, I'm evaluating the moral implications of Sophie's choices in the movie "Sophie's Choice." For those of you not familiar with the movie, Sophie and her two children are in a concentration camp and a Nazi gives her two choices. She can either 1) Choose one of her children to be killed and the other one will be spared. Or 2) She can refuse to choose either of her children to be sacrificed and the Nazi will kill both of them.

Obviously this is a really morbid moral dilemma and neither decisions seems particularly great. I'm basically arguing (kind of un-popularly) that the best thing for Sophie to do is to refuse to sacrifice either of her children, which effectively leads to both of their deaths. My basic argument is that Sophie is faced with two conflicting obligations. The first is the obligation to save as many children as possible and the second is to refuse to betray or abandon either of her children. Essentially, I think that the second obligation is more important (because of the idea of trust. If Sophie chooses to sacrifice one of her children, she is betraying the trust that she shares with her children) and ultimately trumps the first obligation and she should therefore choose the second of the Nazi's options.

Most people hear this and get really upset and don't understand how I could condone the loss of two innocent lives when one could have been prevented. This is the most simple explanation of my thought process. If Sophie chooses one of her children to be killed, she has directly caused that child's death because it was her decision. If she refuses to choose either of her children to be sacrificed, she is sticking with her children and the only person who can be blamed for the death of the children is the Nazi who chose to kill the children. I'm also using Immanuel Kant's theories regarding the universalizability of the maxim as well as the notion that you cannot treat humans as mere means to further support my argument (I think that Kant would arrive at the same conclusion).

Obviously this is a really simplified version of my argument and I'm leaving out a ton of details and reasoning. But does anyone have any thoughts about my argument? Even if you don't agree with me, I think that it's thought provoking at the very least.

Some thoughts on Thomason's "A Defense of Abortion".

In A Defense of Abortion, Thomason argued that the pregnant woman has the right to choose whether to abort the baby. She give a very good analogy. She assumes that the woman body is just like the room. You feel the room is stuffy, then you therefore open a window to air it but a burglar climbs in. And you have installed bars on the windows, in precisely to prevent burglars from getting in. But the burglar got in only because a defect in the bars. It would be absurd to say that you would give the burglar a right to the use of the house. You have tried everything to avoid pregnancy but eventually you are still pregnancy. Then Thomason claims that abortion should be permissible in this case. However, I have a worry: what if you opened the windows intentionally and you didn't even installed the bars? And then a burglar climbs in? Would this be the case that the burglar would have the right to stay in the room? Any thought?

Is Animal Testing Permissible?

I'm developing my prompt around animal testing and making an argument that Animal Testing is  permissible for the sake of the human race, mainly due to the amount of value humans can contribute to the world compared to animals. Here is a basic argument:

1. Human lives have more valuable than animal lives. (I go detailed into explaining this, bringing in potential value to the world and contributions to a progressive society)
2. Humans gain benefit from animal testing.
3. Animal testing is permissible.


Of course, opposing arguments would take this type of form:

1. Animals have feelings and can feel pain.
2. Animal testing harms animals.
3. It is wrong to cause harm to beings with feelings.
4. Animal testing is wrong.

I'm thinking a good chunk of my paper will be devoted to answering objections because there are many, many reasons why people think animal testing is not permissible. Yet, it is hard to beat the point that human lives have the potential to contribute more value than animal lives.

Thoughts?

An objection to abortion

I'm currently working on the final paper, and my thesis is that abortion should be permissible. However, I have trouble responding to one of the possible objections. I'd be grateful for any thoughts.

A couple has just married. During their honeymoon, they decided to have a baby. A couple months later the woman managed to get pregnant. Unfortunately, the husband cheated during her pregnancy and asks for divorce. Desperate and depressed, the woman decides to give up this fetus. The question is: should we allow the woman have an abortion simply because she regrets her decision? If we allow her to do that, this seems quite problematic since she has the responsibility to take care of it. 

Establishing objective theory of welfare as the most appropriate theory

We have covered the objective theory of welfare, namely the objective list before the midterms. Objective list, as we all know, contains some basic elements which is intrinsically valuable for life. Among the elements, happiness seems to be one which should be make the list before any other element. Most of us concur that happiness makes our life better in itself. However, the desire satisfactionists and the hedonists might not fully agree with this. So, what arguments would someone who is endorsing happiness would put forward when people object to happiness being intrinsically valuable? Also, what is biggest objection to both desire satisfactionists and hedonists from the point of view of people in favor of the objective list theory of welfare?

In case any of you are redditors...

Peter Singer did an AMA yesterday about a new book of his on utilitarianism. Some interesting things came up I thought, if anyone feels like checking it out.

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/32lnif/im_peter_singer_australian_moral_philosopher_and/