PBA410H: Don Marquis

• https://www.jstor.org/stable/2026961 or https://drive.google.com/file/d/11e6JJ4i-Z_MWULFXxk1wdNMwOgD1aCkf/view?usp=sharing
• http://blog.secularprolife.org/2013/01/a-future-like-ours.html
• ERI discusses FLO on podcast roughly 20 min in
  • good points that FLO doesn't seem to answer enough q's e.g. why are cannibalism or necrophilia wrong? Or sexually assaulting a permanently comatose person? Premise of human dignity answers those Q's
  • though FLO helps explain our intuition that death of a child seems, all other things being equal, to be more sad than death of an elderly person – grief over their lost futures
• ERI 'new arguments for the sanctity of life'
• Christopher Kaczor, Ethics of Abortion, A Flourishing Like Ours section
• citation for pro-choice philosophers considering this to be the strongest pro-life argument
• SPL http://blog.secularprolife.org/2014/06/the-imago-dei-or-why-should-secularists.html
• connection to assisted suicide debate. Question about whether or not the terminally ill, suffering person, has anything in her future which she will value at that point. Link to social science on fluctuation in the desire to die, seems to give evidence that people can find Value in their existence even after initial suicidal ideation or between episodes of suicidal ideation.
• Powerpoint from James Schadenberg

• Goals and Assumptions
  • Aim is to show that abortion is generally immoral
    • Assumes that if we can prove a fetus has a right to life, it is wrong to abort it
      • Responding to people who believe in pro-choice arguments based on ‘personhood’
    • *Marquis’ argument is irrelevant to Violinist Argument defenders
• The debate: characterizing the fetus
  • Prolife:
    • life starts at conception
    • fetuses possess unique DNA and so are human individuals
    • Therefore, abortion is wrong
  • Prochoice:
    • fetuses don’t have personhood
    • fetuses are not rational agents
    • fetuses aren’t social beings
    • Therefore, abortion is not wrong
  • Marquis: The justifications for both sides are, for the most part true
• The debate: finding a general moral principle
  • Pro-life
    • it is wrong to take a human life
    • killing babies is wrong
  • Pro-choice
    • being a person/rational agent gives one intrinsic moral value
    • it is only wrong to take the life of a member of the ‘human community’
• PROBLEMS WITH THE PROCHOICE SIDE (ACCORDING TO MARQUIS)
  • Principle embraces too little:
    • Infants, young children, severely disabled, temporarily unconscious, and mentally ill people are not rational agents
    • It’s hard to fix this without arbitrary/ad hoc reasoning
  • Principle is ambiguous
    • Why should psychological characteristics make a moral difference? Why not a biological difference instead? (ableism?)
    • If ‘personhood’ is moral term, it is assuming the premise

• Problems with prolife side (according to Marquis)
  • Principle embraces too much
    • Human cancer-cell culture is both living and human
    • You can say instead “it is wrong to take a human being’s life” but Marquis doesn’t think it is obvious that fetuses are human beings
  • Principle is ambiguous
    • Why should biological characteristics make a moral difference? Why not a psychological difference instead? (speciecism?)
    • If ‘human being’ is moral term, it is assuming the premise

• Both sides are missing the essence of the issue
  • In order to generalize a principle as to whether abortion is wrong, we must understand why killing in general is wrong, and then see how that applies to abortion
  • So we must ask why it is wrong to kill adult humans like ourselves
• First premise: it is wrong to kill us
  • Why?
    • NOT primarily because it harms the person who kills us
    • NOT primarily because it harms our friends and relatives
    • It is wrong because of its harm on us, the victim
• How does killing harm us?
  • “The loss of one's life is one of the greatest losses one can suffer. The loss of one's life deprives one of all the experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one's future. Therefore, killing someone is wrong, primarily because the killing inflicts (one of) the greatest possible losses on the victim.”
  • It is not simply the loss of your life, but the loss of your entire future and all values it would contain, even if you do not value it currently
• Support for Marquis’ claim that it is wrong to kill someone if they will have a ‘future like ours’
  • The primary wrong-making aspect of killing is the loss of the victims future because:
    • It explains why killing is regarded as the worst crime
    • It explains why those dying prematurely (eg. Cancer, AIDS) see their premature death as a very bad thing
      • A better theory would require a natural property of killing which better fits the attitudes of the dying
• Implications of this view
  • Not “speciesist”
    • Incompatible with view that it is only wrong to kill humans
      • A species from another planet that has a future like ours cannot be killed
      • If a species on this planet has a future sufficiently like ours then it cannot be killed
  • It is wrong to kill children and infants, for they have a future like ours
  • Euthanasia is permissible in cases where one’s future is not comprised of valuable experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments
  • Abortion is prima facie wrong
    • Because a fetus has a future that is identical to an adult humans’, it follows that it is wrong to kill a fetus, and so abortion is wrong.
      • problem for PL Position: why does Marquis question whether the early embryo is yet an individual? Unclear
    • This does not claim that fetuses are persons. It merely claims that fetuses have valuable futures
• Note on future-like-ours theory
  • This isn’t a complete account of the wrong-making aspects of killing. But it is a sufficient reason to believe certain killings are seriously wrong. (sufficient but not necessary)
  • If something doesn’t have a future like ours, it still might be bad to kill it for some other reason
• Two prochoice counterarguments
  • Desire Account
  • Discontinuation account
• Third counterargument: requirement of sentience in order to be a “victim”?
• Concluding notes
  • contraception?
    • “An objection I commonly hear to this argument is that it would mean that contraception is immoral, since sperm and ova also have a “future-like-ours.” But this rests on a common pro-choice strawman of the pro-life position. We argue that the human zygote is valuable because it is a living human organism, a member of species Homo sapiens. Sperm and eggs are mere haploid cells, from the larger parent organism (the man or woman who provided it). The sperm and eggs are not human organisms. As such, they do not have a “future like ours,” that is, a future of experiences, plans, etc., that all human beings will experience. Their future is to provide genetic information for the new human organism, then to die as soon as they contribute their genetic material” ¹⁾
      • i.e. a sperm left alone in a man's body, or an egg left alone in a woman's body, will never develop into a toddler or a teenager.

Conversationally²⁾