Killing to Survive

I've watched far too many episodes of "Breaking Bad" in the last few weeks, and just about my only defense is that the show does provide lots of food for thought about ethics.  Spoiler alert!  If you're trying to catch up before the season finale on Sunday, don't read this post.

Lots of people get killed in the show, and many of the killings are done for purposes of self-preservation.  The

Mini-problems: The case of the lost notebook

I am fond of using mini-problems in ethics classes--tiny little every day questions of not very great significance.  The point of discussing them is that they don't arouse any distracting emotionality, and people don't "identify" with particular solutions (like they do when it comes to matters like abortion and gay marriage).  So you can have a dispassionate, exploratory discussion.  What's more,

It's a Matter of Respect

I'm home from one trip and about to embark on another, so obviously I'm too busy for blogging--there's cleaning and packing to do, right?  Right, but that would be so boring....

Some long drives in the past week gave me time to think about animal welfare regulation just a little more.  In my past posts, I attempted to think about the ethics of welfare regulation "ad hominem" -- in the

Dueling Analogies

Alright, one more post on animal welfare regulations (like Prop. 2 in California, which requires animal housing large enough so the animal can turn around).  In my last post I talked about five cases in which progressives have supported both "revolution" for victims of an injustice and reform.  I argued that victims want both and are entitled to both.  Animals are entitled to both too, if

Judy Nicastro's Abortion at 23 Weeks

This past week democrats in Texas managed to stave off a bill that would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks, thanks to a filibuster by Wendy Davis and a noisy gallery of abortion rights advocates.  A few days earlier, there was an editorial in the New York Times week in review section called "My Abortion at 23 Weeks".  I thought Wendy Davis should have read it during her filibuster.  Rarely does

The Badness of Death

What makes death bad for someone who dies?  This is on my mind for lots of different reasons--so here goes, some thinking aloud.

The question is puzzling if you even just think about the death of one individual, of one age and species, but let's be masochists and thinking about lots of deaths.

Death of a zygote after 2 days development
Death of a newborn baby
Death of a healthy young adult

Was I once an egg?

Short recap of the Marquis argument I was responding to in my last post: Marquis says killing one of us is wrong because it takes away a FLO (future like ours). But abortion takes a FLO from a fetus.  So abortion is wrong too.

Here's a response to Marquis I find intriguing/bewildering.  Eugene Mills says if I was once a zygote, I was also once an egg.  I wasn't also once a sperm. No, I was just

Is it wrong to take the future from a fetus?

Don Marquis's argument against abortion (in "Why Abortion is Immoral") is pleasingly simple.  He says the wrongness of killing one of us (folks like you and me who are obvious members of the "moral community") is due to the fact that killing deprives an individual of their entire future, a valuable "Future Like Ours" (FLO) in most cases.  But abortion deprives a fetus of a FLO as well.  So

How to argue against gay marriage (part III)

And now for the rebuttal.  In the last post I said that if I had to make an argument against gay marriage--in a debate club setting, or some such--then perhaps I'd say this:

There's a great deal of value in knowing both of your biological
parents and being raised by them (other things being equal--of course
there are exceptions).
The normal way of procreating for same sex couples involves a

Intergenerational Amnesia

Suppose a 10 year old child had a life-threatening illness that could only be cured at the cost of amnesia. She would lose all memory of her first 10 years, but go on living. It would be bad to forget her early years, but surely worth it to stay alive.  I think we should say roughly the same thing about the practice of saving babies' lives by placing "baby boxes" hear hospitals. When a desperate

"Life begins at conception"

 
Mary Elizabeth Williams declares herself a pro-choice liberal, but wants to concede that "life begins at conception". To her, this is undeniable common sense. But in fact, there is actually a very solid reason to doubt that any human's lifespan starts as early as conception.  At conception, what exists is a single-celled zygote.  That zygote contains the makings of not just the embryo (fetus

Beyonce Lip Synced Anthem?

Uh oh, it seems Beyonce lip-synced the national anthem yesterday.  Here's what USA Today is reporting--

Master Sgt. Kristin DuBois, spokeswoman for the President's Own
United States Marine Band, confirms to USA TODAY's Maria Puente that
Beyoncé was lip-syncing.
It's standard operating procedure for musicians to pre-record crucial music such as Hail to the Chief and The Star-Spangled Banner

What is a placenta? (And why does it matter?)

credit: www.birthingfromwithin.com

Norman Ford's book When Did I Begin? is a treasure trove of information about fetal development, plus some very interesting reflections on how the biological facts bear on whether each of us was once a zygote or once a fetus. This is a matter of pure metaphysical interest but also with possible ethical implications.  Ford offers several reasons to doubt that

Survey on the Good and Meaningful Life (Results)

My class on the meaning of life did something novel this semester--we collected the public's responses to a set of 21 questions about the good and/or meaningful life.  First, an explanation of what the point was. Then I'll tell you the results.

THE POINT
Primarily, the idea was to "problematize" the appeal to intuitions in our readings.  Here's how it goes. An author is defending an account of

The Thinking Animal Problem

I'm still in "pondering mode" on the question of when we make first contact with our children. I wrote about that topic in July and again in August. Now I'm reading Eric Olson's book What Are We? and ... still pondering.

I'm fond of the animalist view--Olson's view--which says we are animals (or organisms) that come to have mental properties at some point, whether before or after we are born

The Hidden Cost of Following the Principle of Procreative Beneficence

Lately I've been thinking (and writing) about the principle of procreative beneficence that's been advocated by Julian Savulescu (lots of links here). Here's the basic idea, from an abstract to one of his papers--



It seems to me there is at least a tension between following the principle of Procreative Beneficence (PB) and having what you might call a "parental attitude".  But the tension is

Animal Pain

This is a terrifically interesting and well done video responding to the contention that animals can't feel pain.  I'll make some comments below.




1:08 The video starts in a shaky way, speculating that sea mammals may be aware of the feelings of the humans they interact with. Well, maybe. Fortunately that's just the entry point into the main question: do animals feel pain?  Wish I could refer

Experience Machine Survey

This semester I've added a new component to my class on the good life and the meaning of life: an attempt to discover the public's intuitions on 10-20 cases and thought experiments that drive philosophers' views in both areas.  In another month, I'll be putting the whole survey online.  But for the moment, your comments are welcome on the way we've formulated questions (2), (3), and (4). If you

Repudiate, Excoriate, Disassociate

A quick word about this.  PZ Myers' frustration is understandable, and that's a beautifully written rant, but Ron Lindsay did repudiate the savages.  He said "no one wants them in the movement."  That's repudiating; it's just not excoriating.  Must we excoriate?  I'm not so sure, as my impression is that the savages love the attention. They positively thrive on being excoriated. My view is that

A Puzzle About Twins

Suppose people start existing on the first day after conception--just suppose.  Here's an argument that seems to show that identical twins must be an exception.  Take Betty and Casey, who come into existence as my diagram depicts--


Jeff McMahan makes this argument--

[Betty and Casey] ... cannot both be identical with the original zygote for, given the transitivity of identity, that would imply