Читать книгу Bioethics - Группа авторов - Страница 81

One of the most discussed and reprinted papers on abortion is Don Marquis’s “Why Abortion is Immoral.” In that article, Marquis contends that what makes it wrong to kill something is that thing’s having a future like ours.

One objection to this view is that whether something has a future like ours is a matter of that thing’s potentialities, so Marquis’s view is open to all of the objections that tell against any view that appeals to potentialities.

A second objection involves the idea of the “complete reprogramming” of the mind of a human animal – where all of that human animal’s current memories are replaced by totally different, apparent memories, and, similarly, whatever other mental states and traits that may be crucial for personal identity, such as one’s personality traits, are also replaced by completely different ones. The neo‐Lockean person would not survive such reprogramming, but the human animal would do so, and would have a future like ours. Moreover, if the neo‐Lockean person that initially existed had traits making for an unhappy life, whereas the neo‐Lockean person who existed after the reprogramming had traits conducive to a very good life, the reprogramming would have enabled the human animal in question to have a better future like ours. The question, accordingly, is how Marquis’s deprivation account of the wrongness of killing can explain how such complete reprogramming of a human’s mind is morally wrong.

My basic claims are then, first, that such “reprogramming” of the mind of a human animal is morally just as wrong as killing a human animal, and secondly, that the wrongness of such reprogramming cannot be explained in terms of depriving an animal – as contrasted with a neo‐Lockean person – of certain future goods.