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Single Idea 6999

[filed under theme 25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 3. Abortion ]

Full Idea

We allow that abortion is permissible in many circumstances, but infanticide is hardly ever permissible, and yet it is hard to justify this disparity in moral judgement in the sense of finding the relevant difference.

Gist of Idea

It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide

Source

Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5)

Book Ref

Jackson,Frank: 'From Metaphysics to Ethics' [OUP 2000], p.134

A Reaction

The implications of this are tough to face. A foetus is (maybe) just not as important as a new-born babe - and so a new-born babe is of less importance than a five-year old. Birth is (or was) a hugely dangerous hurdle to be cleared.

The 27 ideas from 'From Metaphysics to Ethics'

6979 Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson]
7005 Something can only have a place in a preferred account of things if it is entailed by the account [Jackson]
6977 Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson]
6975 Possible worlds could be concrete, abstract, universals, sentences, or properties [Jackson]
6976 In physicalism, the psychological depends on the physical, not the other way around [Jackson]
6982 Long arithmetic calculations show the a priori can be fallible [Jackson]
6980 Conceptual analysis studies whether one story is made true by another story [Jackson]
6983 Intuitions about possibilities are basic to conceptual analysis [Jackson]
6984 Smooth reductions preserve high-level laws in the lower level [Jackson]
6991 We examine objects to determine colour; we do not introspect [Jackson]
6987 We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity [Jackson]
6986 Is the dependence of the psychological on the physical a priori or a posteriori? [Jackson]
6990 Keep distinct the essential properties of water, and application conditions for the word 'water' [Jackson]
6985 Analysis is finding necessary and sufficient conditions by studying possible cases [Jackson]
6989 I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson]
6988 Mathematical sentences are a problem in a possible-worlds framework [Jackson]
6993 Redness is a property, but only as a presentation to normal humans [Jackson]
6992 If different states can fulfil the same role, the converse must also be possible [Jackson]
6995 Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson]
6998 Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson]
6997 Moral functionalism says moral terms get their meaning from their role in folk morality [Jackson]
7000 Which are prior - thin concepts like right, good, ought; or thick concepts like kindness, equity etc.? [Jackson]
6999 It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide [Jackson]
6996 Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson]
6994 Truth supervenes on being [Jackson]
6978 Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson]
14707 Conceptual analysis is needed to establish that metaphysical reductions respect original meanings [Jackson, by Schroeter]