PHIL 164 Lecture Notes - Lecture 24: Fetus, Counterexample

• School: UMASS-Amherst
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 164
• Professor: Rancourt Benjamin

Document Summary

Tooley in defense of abortion and infanticide . Person: for tooley"s purposes: a person is a being with a serious moral right to life. Person vs. human being: infant is obviously a human being, but not obviously a person, there are arguments worth taking seriously against the second, but not the first. Rights and the interest principle: having rights implies having interests, having interest implies have desires, no capacity for desire, no rights. To have a right to x, one must have the capacity to have an interest in x. Kitten: interest in no torture, no interest in continued existence, adult human, interest in continued existence, interest in expression, etc. Tooley"s account: person s has a right to x just in case they can have interest in x and either, 1. S cannot give permission to others to deprive them of x: 2. S can give permission to deprive of x, but they have not given that permission.