If Abortion,then Infanticide

Our contention is that all of the major arguments for abortion are also arguments for permitting infanticide. One cannot distinguish the fetus from the infant in terms of a morally significant intrinsic property, nor are they morally discernible in terms of standing in different relationships to others. The logic of our position is that if such arguments justify abortion, then they also justify infanticide. If we are right that infanticide is not justified, then such arguments will fail to justify abortion. We respond to those philosophers who accept infanticide by putting forth a novel account of how the mindless can be wronged which serves to distinguish morally significant potential from morally irrelevant potential. This allows our account to avoid the standard objection that many entities possess a potential for personhood which we are intuitively under no obligation to further or protect.     

Twin Inc.

This paper presents an account of how human spontaneous embryonic chimeras are formed. On the prevalent view in the philosophical literature, it is said that chimeras are the product of two embryos that fuse to form a new third embryo. We call this version of fusion synthesis. In contrast to synthesis, we present an alternative mechanism for chimera formation called incorporation, wherein one embryo incorporates the cells of a second embryo into its body. We argue that the incorporation thesis explains other types of chimera formation, which are better understood, and is more consistent than synthesis with what is known about embryological development. Incorporation also has different implications than synthesis and so avoids the philosophical puzzles that are often said to accompany embryonic chimera formation—puzzles which pose problems to the human embryo’s persistence from fertilization to the fetal stage of human development.     

The fairness of Hell

The Christian conception of Hell as everlasting punishment for past sins is confronted with two charges of unfairness. The first is the inequity of an eternal punishment. The never‐ending punishment seems disproportionate to the finite sin (Kershnar, Lewis, Adams). A second and related problem is that the boundary between sins that send one for all eternity to Hell and those sins that are slightly less bad that are compatible with an eternity in Heaven is arbitrary and thus it is unfair that sinners so alike are treated differently (Sider). Hell, as traditionally conceived, is then claimed to be incompatible with God's traditional attributes such as his commitment to justice, omniscience and omnipotence. The unfairness can be avoided by appealing to God's foreknowledge and a debt/atonement theory of punishment. My view is analogous to refusing to parole the unrepentant. If a wrongdoer is eternally defiant, then he can never be released from Hell for his debt won't ever be paid if he isn't reformed and reconciled with the wronged. So it doesn't matter that his initial sin was a finite wrong not deserving of infinite punishment nor a sin no worse than that of the penitent in Heaven.     

Fission and confusion.

Catholic opponents of abortion and embryonic stem cell research usually base their position on a hylomorphic account of ensoulment at fertilization. They maintain that we each started out as one-cell ensouled organisms. Critics of this position argue that it is plagued by a number of intractable problems due to fission (twinning) and fusion. We're unconvinced that such objections to early ensoulment provide any reason to doubt the coherence of the hylomorphic account. However, we do maintain that a defense of ensoulment at fertilization must deny that we're essentially organisms.     

Protecting Persons from Animal Bites: the Case for the Ontological Significance of Persons

Eric Olson criticizes Lynne Baker’s constitution account of persons on the grounds that personhood couldn’t be ontologically significant as nothing new comes into existence with the acquisition of thought. He claims that for something coming to function as a thinker is no more ontologically significant than something coming to function as a locomotor when a motor is added to it. He levels two related charges that there’s no principled answer about when and where constitution takes place rather than an already existing object just acquiring new properties. I’ll argue that none of these objections are problems for understanding person to be a substantial kind.

     

A Puzzle about the Demands of Morality

Two thought experiments are provided which elicit whatappear to be opposing judgments about the demands of morality.One Unger-inspired thought experiment suggests that a personmust give up four decades of earnings just to save a singlelife. The other evokes the contrary intuition that onedoesn't have to labor forty years without compensation inorder to prevent the death of an individual. However,considerations of consistency do not demand that weabandon one of our intuitive responses. This is becausethere is a morally significant difference between thetwo burdens that the people suffer in the respectivethought experiments. The difference is a result of humanpsychology being such that it is easier to bear theaftermath of an event that renders one's earlier effortsfutile than it is to suffer identical efforts goingunrewarded in the future. A conclusion that can bedrawn from this temporal asymmetry is that while moralityis not quite as demanding as Unger and many consequentialistsmaintain, it is much more demanding than many of their opponents realize.     

LOWE'S DEFENCE OF CONSTITUTION AND THE PRINCIPLE OF WEAK EXTENSIONALITY

E.J. Lowe is one of the few philosophers who defend both the existence of spatially coincident entities and the Principle of Weak Extensionality that no two objects which have proper parts have exactly the same proper parts at the same time. Lowe maintains that when spatially coincident things like the statue and the lump of bronze are in a constitution relation, the constituted entity (the statue) has parts that the constituting entity (the lump) doesn't, hence the compatibility with Weak Extensionality. My contention is that his argument for why the statue has parts the lump of bronze lacks can also be used to show that the lump of bronze has parts the statue doesn't. This will mean that there is no basis for saying the statue and the lump are in a constitution relation. I argue for accepting a modified account of constitution and abandoning the Principle of Weak Extensionality.