Abort, prenatal skada och vad som spelar roll i alternativa möjliga liv

Institutionen för idé- och samhällsstudier bjuder in till de årliga Burmanföreläsningarna i filosofi. Årets gästföreläsare är Professor Jeff McMahan, University of Oxford, som ger tre öppna föreläsningar under tre dagar om etiken kring att skapa, rädda och avsluta liv.

Föreläsning 1 (titel på engelska): Abortion, Prenatal Injury, and What Matters in Alternative Possible Lives

Onsdag 1 december kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal NAT.D.450

Abstract (på engelska): There are certain assumptions about the nature of interests and the basis of rational egoistic concern that imply that death is not a misfortune for an individual of our kind for a certain period after that individual comes into existence. If this implication is correct, and if the nature of a fetus provides no basis for attributing to it a moral status that makes killing it wrong even though its death is not a harm, then there may be no moral reason not to have a painless abortion. On these assumptions, having an abortion is relevantly like preventing a person from coming into existence, which most regard as permissible. Yet the same assumptions imply that a fetus has no present interest in avoiding a painless injury. The obvious response is that, although abortion does not frustrate any interest of the fetus, prenatal injury is likely to frustrate interests that the fetus will later have independently of whether it is injured. I will argue, however, that although this is true to a limited extent, it is insufficient to show that prenatal injury will later be worse for the injured person in the relevant sense of “worse for.” I will conclude that the infliction of prenatal injury is often relevantly like causing a less well-off person to exist rather than a different, better-off person.

Fler Burmanföreläsningar

Föreläsning 2 (titel på engelska): The Population Ethics Asymmetry and the Permissibility of Procreation
Torsdag 2 december kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal NAT.D.450

Föreläsning 3 (titel på engelska): Moral Reasons to Cause People to Exist
Fredag 3 december kl. 13.15-15.00, Hörsal NAT.D.450

Föreläsningarna ges på engelska. Alla intresserade är välkomna till dessa föreläsningar!

Läs mer om Burmanföreläsningarna här 

Läs mer om professor McMahan här: https://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/people/jeff-mcmahan