Ethics

Punishment, the Death Penalty, and Race

Punishment, The Death Penalty, and Race:

“Why do we punish criminals?  Is it from a desire for revenge?  Is it in order to prevent a repetition of the crime?”  And so on.  The truth is there is no one reason.  There is the institution of punishing criminals.  Different people support this for different reasons, and for different reasons in different cases and at different times…And so punishment is carried out.”

--Ludwig Wittgenstein

World Hunger Statistics

World Hunger Statistics*

Definitions
 

Hunger is a term which has three meanings:

• the uneasy or painful sensation caused by want of food; craving appetite. Also the exhausted condition caused by want of food
• the want or scarcity of food in a country
• a strong desire or craving

World hunger refers to the second definition, aggregated to the world level. The related technical term (in this case operationalized in medicine)  is malnutrition.

Malnutrition/Undernutrition is a general term that indicates a lack of some or all nutritional elements necessary for human health. There are two basic types of malnutrition. The first and most important is protein-energy malnutrition--the lack of enough protein (from meat and other sources) and food that provides energy (measured in calories) which all of the basic food groups provide. This is the type of malnutrition that is referred to when world hunger is discussed.  The second type of malnutrition, also very important, is micronutrient (vitamin and mineral) deficiency. This is not the type of malnutrition that is referred to when world hunger is discussed, though it is certainly very important. 

Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is the most lethal form of malnutrition/hunger. It is basically a lack of calories and protein. Food is converted into energy by humans, and the energy contained in food is measured by calories.  Protein is necessary for key body functions including provision of essential amino acids and development and maintenance of muscles. PEM, in some degree, is essentially what is meant by hunger. 

 

Regan on The Case for Animal Rights

“The Case for Animal Rights”

Tom Regan

The Aims of the Animal Rights Movement:

• The total abolition of the use of animals in science;
• The total dissolution of commercial animal agriculture;
• The total elimination of commercial and sport hunting and trapping.

The Difference between Animal Welfare and Animal Rights

Reducing Harm (AW) is not the same thing as Guarding Rights (AR)

“What’s wrong—fundamentally wrong—with the way animals are treated isn’t the details that vary from case to case.  It’s the whole system…what is wrong isn’t the pain; isn’t the suffering; isn’t the deprivation.  These compound what’s wrong…but they are not the fundamental wrong.” (111)

 

Animal Rights: An Overview

Animal Welfare, Animal Rights, and Dominion:

A Background Discussion

The day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin...are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?

~Jeremy Bentham

 

Thomson on the Permissibility of Abortion

Judith Jarvis Thomson

“A Defense of Abortion”

Thomson argues that the claim that a fetus is a human being from the moment of conception is usually not very well supported by abortion opponents.  The most standard argument is: There is no non-arbitrary way of picking a time in the development of the fetus that marks the moment the fetus becomes a human being.  Thus, the fetus must become a human being at conception. 

 

Marquis on Abortion

“Why Abortion Is Immoral”

Don Marquis

The Future Like Ours (FLO) Argument:

Marquis argues that abortion—except in cases of rape, during the first fourteen days of pregnancy, when carrying the fetus to term will endanger the mother’s life, or when the fetus is anencephalic—is wrong.  Indeed, he suggests that killing a fetus is wrong for the same reason that killing an adult is wrong.

Marquis suggests that the parties to the abortion debate find themselves at a stand-off or stalemate.  One issue that he believes cannot be resolved—indeed, it may explain why the debate is stalemated in the first place—is the issue concerning whether fetuses have a right to life.  Pro-lifers want to focus on the fact that fetuses are human beings (at least potentially) whereas pro-choicers want to focus on the fact that fetuses are not persons (even though they may be so potentially).

Marquis suggests that to make progress in the abortion debate, what we need is a new argumentative strategy.  His preferred strategy is an argument he calls the “future life ours” account of the wrongness of killing (FLO).

The Moral and Legal Debate About Abortion

Morality and the Law:

Principle: If some action x is immoral, then x should be illegal.

Is this a good principle?  Can you think of any counter-examples?

Active vs. Passive Euthanasia

Is Euthanasia Wrong?

James Rachels

“Active and Passive Euthanasia”

The Current State of Play with Euthanasia:

Rachels cites the AMA policy, which seems to depend/rely on the active/passive euthanasia distinction.  The AMA says:

“The intentional termination of the life one human being by another—mercy killing—is contrary to that for which the medical profession stands…the cessation of the employment of extraordinary means to prolong the life of the body when there is irrefutable evidence that biological death is imminent.”

Rachels disagrees with the AMA’s position.

Euthanasia: Background Information

The Hippocratic Oath:   

In general terms, it is (1) to do away with the suffering of the sick, (2) to lessen the violence of their diseases, and (3) to refuse to treat those who are overmastered by their diseases, realizing that in such cases medicine is powerless.                        

The Problem of Euthanasia:                                                                                                                                 
As medical science progresses, euthanasia becomes a progressively pressing issue.  After all, respirators, artificial kidneys, intravenous feeding, new drugs, etc, have enabled us to prolong life.  And now that we are able to keep people alive artificially, we are faced with the practical and moral question of when to allow people to die.  How shall we personally meet a good death? And how should physicians act in the face of terminal illness and imminent death?

 

War, Non-combatants, and Self-Defense

Is Killing in War Wrong?

General Introduction:

“As the “search and destroy” mission unfolded [in the Vietnamese village of My Lai], it soon degenerated into a massacre of over 300 apparently unarmed civilians including women, children, and the elderly.  Lieutenant Calley ordered his men to enter the village firing, though there had been no report of opposing fire.  According to eyewitness reports…several old men were bayoneted, praying women and children were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped and then killed.  For his part, Calley was said to have rounded up a group of villagers, ordered them into a ditch, and mowed them down in a fury of machine gun fire.”

The morality of killing enemy combatants vs. the immorality of killing non-combatants

What is the salient moral difference?