PHIL 150 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Fetus, Supererogation
Document Summary
Thomson wants to undercut the force of the basic conservative argument against abortion. She does so by proposing a number of thought experiments. Thought experiments are imagined scenarios philosophers present to test our intuitions about moral problems. Thomson"s thought experiments are meant to be structurally similar to abortion cases, but to show that ending a life in such cases is not unjust. Thomson argues we can construct an exactly parallel argument substituting violinist" for fetus" and unhooking yourself from the violinist" for abortion". Since, we know that this conclusion is false, this argument cannot be sound. If a has a right to x, then a has a right to anything he requires for x unless some other person b already has a prior right to that thing. In short, the right to life is the right not to be killed unjustly. That is, not to be killed by someone doing what they have no right to do.
