Download Utilitas.pdf

Contents : Book Reviews DOI: 10.1017/S0953820804211487 Jeff McMahan The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life New York Oxford University Press 2002 pp. vii + 540. Applied philosophy has a bad reputation. It is often seen as a less worthy eld of philosophical study characterized by super cial poorly structured badly argued opinions. Anyone who holds this kind of view would do well to read Jeff McMahan s The Ethics of Killing. This book is a most impressive rigorously argued analysis of questions regarding the morality of killing. A large part of its appeal must surely derive from the author s competence with questions of metaphysics and his ability to apply his theoretical conclusions on personal identity the wrongness of killing etc. to practical questions of ethics. The rst chapter sets the foundation for the discussions of practical problems to come. McMahan begins with an account of personal identity since if we cannot decide what we are we cannot decide what interests we might have whether we are due respect and in general how we should be treated. This early discussion of personal identity will also have implications for how we understand disputed entities i.e. entities whose status is unclear such as foetuses PVS patients those suffering from dementia etc. McMahan develops an embodied mind theory according to which the criterion for personal identity is the continued existence and functioning of the capacity for consciousness. He examines in detail Par t s claim that the criterion of identity is psychological continuity but nds it lacking because it cannot account for problematic cases e.g. cases of Alzheimer s disease in which the psychological continuity ceases but consciousness continues. Instead identity is based on physical and functional continuity in the areas of the brain where consciousness is realized. This physical and functional continuity of consciousness is what explains our egoistic concern about our future. Egoistic concern is a special kind of concern each of us has for his future w e anticipate our own future experiences fearing future pains and looking forward to future pleasures in a way that is different from our attitude to the future experiences of others (p. 41). Unlike personal identity egoistic concern can be a matter of degree and is thus affected by the degree of psychological unity of the individual. Having given an account of what we are one which crucially differentiates between the person and the organism and an account of what concerns us the book goes on to consider why death is bad and whether some deaths are worse than others. McMahan focuses on two different accounts of the badness of death. According to the Life Comparative Account to evaluate the badness of the death we need to compare the value of the life if the death occurred with the value of the life if the death were not to occur. According to the 118 Book Reviews Time-Relative Interest Account the death is evaluated in terms of the individual s time-relative interests (interests an individual has an egoistic concern for at that time) rather than the life as a whole. These two accounts give different answers to practical questions. The Life Comparative Account would claim that the death of an early foetus is the worst possible death since it occurs so close to the start of the individual s existence and there is a huge amount of difference between this short life and the full human life we compare it with. By contrast the Time-Relative Interest Account favoured by McMahan would imply that the death of an early foetus is less bad because of the weak prudential unity relations that connect it to itself in the future. So the death of beings who are psychologically distant or even entirely cut off from their own future selves beings who have no consciously intended future goals is less of a misfortune for those beings at that time. Conversely the death of a being who desires and values future goals at the time of his death and who therefore has strong prudential unity relations to his future self is worse. Having given an account of the badness of death based on his account of identity and egoistic concern McMahan then goes on to consider what is wrong with killing. McMahan wants to avoid a position in which the wrongness of killing is linked to the amount of good in a person s life as someone s interests can vary depending on arbitrary and uncontrollable factors. Killing therefore is equally wrong because it is the killing of a person for whom respect is owed. Respect is understood as accruing from the autonomous determinations of that person s will (p. 260) and as there is no sharp cut-off point in the process of becoming autonomous there is no sharp cut-off point in moral status. We have then a Two-Tiered Account of the morality of killing: On the one hand we have beings who are due respect and whose lives

INFO HASH : ccb1535911cae6c799ad74ab168951fcb1a324b9

Download now

File Size: 39.6 kb