Philosophy

In 'The Problem of Infant Suffering',1 Andrew Chignell considers the difficult question of why God sometimes allows infants to be brutally tortured to death. He notes that some might assume that (A) if God exists, then brutal infant torture and death is 'redeemed', 'defeated', or ...

... 2009 May;9(5):27-9. Interests and harms in primate research. Nobis N. Philosophy, Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA, USA. nathan.nobis@gmail.com. Comment on: Am J Bioeth. 2009 May;9(5):3-12. PMID: 19396679 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]. Publication Types: ...

In Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (2007) and an earlier article in this journal, “Defending Abortion Philosophically”(2006), Francis Beckwith argues that fetuses are, from conception, prima facie wrong to kill. His arguments are based on what he calls a “metaphysics of the human person” known as “The Substance View.” I argue that Beckwith’s metaphysics does not support his abortion ethic: Moral, not metaphysical, claims that are part of this Substance View are the foundation of the argument, and Beckwith inadequately defends these moral claims. Thus, Beckwith’s arguments do not provide strong support for what he calls the “pro-life” view of abortion.

The Animal Rights Debate is structured as a debate. In the first round, Carl Cohen argues that animals do not and cannot have rights, while Tom Regan argues that they do. In the second round, Cohen and Regan respond to each other. The book would make an ideal main ...

Abstract: Shafer-Landau argues that occasional indeterminacy in the metaphysics of morals--ie that moral predicates are vague and, thus, that some moral judgments are neither true nor false (ie indeterminate in truth value)--is compatible with 'moral realism,' the view ...