But for the Grace of God: Abortion and Cognitive Disability, Luck and Moral Status
Many theories of moral status that are intended to ground pro-choice views on abortion tie full moral status to advanced cognitive capabilities. Extant accounts of this kind are inconsistent with the intuition that the profoundly cognitively disabled have full moral status. This paper improves upon...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
[2017]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
Year: 2017, Volume: 20, Issue: 2, Pages: 257-277 |
| RelBib Classification: | NBE Anthropology NCG Environmental ethics; Creation ethics NCH Medical ethics NCJ Ethics of science VA Philosophy |
| Further subjects: | B
Modal theory of luck
B Cognitive Disability B Moral Status B Luck B Intuitions B Bioethics B animal ethics B Abortion B Moral Luck B intergroup bias B Personal Identity |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Many theories of moral status that are intended to ground pro-choice views on abortion tie full moral status to advanced cognitive capabilities. Extant accounts of this kind are inconsistent with the intuition that the profoundly cognitively disabled have full moral status. This paper improves upon these extant accounts by combining an anti-luck condition with Steinbocks stratification of moral status into two levels. On the resulting view, a being has full moral status if and only if (1) she has moral status and (2) (a) has had advanced cognitive capacities, (b) has the potential to develop such capacities, or (c) would have had such capacities were it not for luck. I argue that modal accounts of luck provide a non-speciesist basis for attributing the lack of advanced cognitive capacities in humans to luck without doing the same for non-human animals. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-016-9755-0 |