The Ethics of Killing
Problems at the Margins of Life
1st Edition
Published on 3. January 2002
555 pages
978-0-19-802415-6 (ISBN)
Description
This magisterial work is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of killing, where the moral status of the individual killed is uncertain. Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, McMahan looks carefully at a host of practical issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia.
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Book
02/2002
Oxford University Press Inc
€313.40
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Person
Jeff McMahan is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.
Content
- Intro
- CONTENTS
- 1. IDENTITY
- 1. Preliminaries
- 2. The Soul
- 2.1. Hylomorphism
- 2.2. The Cartesian Soul
- 2.3. Divided Consciousness
- 3. Are We Human Organisms?
- 3.1. When Does a Human Organism Begin to Exist?
- 3.2. Organisms, Embryos, and Corpses
- 3.3. Brain Transplantation
- 3.4. Dicephalus
- 4. The Psychological Account
- 4.1. Identity and Egoistic Concern
- 4.2. Beginning to Exist and Ceasing to Exist
- 4.3. "Pre-persons" and "Post-persons"
- 4.4. Revisions and a Note on Method
- 4.5. Replication and Egoistic Concern
- 4.6. Psychological Connectedness and Continuity
- 5. The Embodied Mind Account
- 5.1. The Embodied Mind Account of Identity
- 5.2. The Basis of Egoistic Concern
- 5.3. Possible Divergences Between Identity and Egoistic Concern
- 5.4. The Individuation of Minds
- 5.5. Mind, Brain, and Organism
- 2. DEATH
- 1. Preliminaries
- 2. The Problem of Comparison
- 2.1. Immortality
- 2.2. The Token Comparison
- 3. The Metaphysical Problem
- 3.1. A Plurality of Comparisons
- 3.2. Criteria for Determining the Appropriate Comparison
- 4. The Problem of Overdetermination
- 4.1. When Death Would Have Occurred Soon From a Different Cause
- 4.2. The Inheritance Strategy and the Problem of the Terminus
- 4.3. Overall Losses in Dying
- 4.4. The Previous Gain Account
- 4.5. Discounting Misfortunes for Previous Gains
- 5. Overall Lifelong Fortune
- 5.1. The Standard for Assessing Fortune
- 5.2. A Hierarchy of Being?
- 5.3. The Overall Fortune of Those Who Die in Infancy
- 6. The Deaths of Fetuses and Infants
- 6.1. The Time-Relative Interest Account
- 6.2. Narrative Unity, Retroactive Effects, Desert, and Desire
- 7. A Paradox
- 3. KILLING
- 1. The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of Death
- 1.1. Two Accounts
- 1.2. The Killing of Animals
- 2. Animals and Severely Cognitively Impaired Human Beings
- 2.1. The Options
- 2.2. Membership in the Human Species
- 2.3. Comembership in a Species as a Special Relation
- 2.4. Convergent Assimilation
- 3. Equality and Respect
- 3.1. The Time-Relative Interest Account
- 3.2. The Requirement of Respect
- 3.3. The Basis of the Worth of Persons
- 4. BEGINNINGS
- 1. Early Abortion
- 2. Late Abortion
- 3. Prenatal Harm
- 4. Is a Later Abortion Worse?
- 5. Time-Relative Interests and Adaptation
- 6. Potential
- 6.1. Potential and Identity
- 6.2. Potential as a Basis for Moral Status
- 6.3. Potential, Cognitive Impairment, and Animals
- 7. The Sanctity of Human Life
- 8. Infanticide
- 8.1. Abortion and Infanticide
- 8.2. Are Infants "Replaceable?
- 9. Abortion as the Denial of Life-Support
- 9.1. The Argument
- 9.2. Responsibility for the Fetus's Need for Aid
- 9.3. Parental Responsibility
- 9.4. Killing and Letting Die
- 9.5. The Dependent Child Case
- 10. Abortion and Self-Defense
- 10.1. Self-Defense Against a Nonresponsible Threat
- 10.2. Proportionality, Third-party Intervention, and Forfeiture
- 10.3. The Decisive Asymmetry
- 5. ENDINGS
- 1. When Do We Die, or Cease to Exist?
- 1.1. Two Concepts of Death
- 1.2. Brain Death
- 1.3. Persistent Vegetative State and Deep Coma
- 1.4. Anencephalic Infants
- 2. Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
- 2.1. From Suicide to Euthanasia
- 2.2. The Sanctity of Life, Again
- 2.3. Respect for the Worth of Persons
- 2.4. Nonvoluntary Euthanasia
- 3. The Withering Away of the Self
- 3.1. The Metaphysics of Progressive Dementia
- 3.2. The Moral Authority of Advance Directives
- NOTES
- REFERENCES
- INDEX OF CASES
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- I
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- S
- T
- U
- W
- Y
- GENERAL INDEX
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
