RIGHTS, INDIRECT HARMS AND THE NON-IDENTITY PROBLEM
The non-identity problem is the problem of grounding moral wrongdoing in cases in which an action affects who will exist in the future. Consider a woman who intentionally conceives while on medication that is harmful for a fetus. If the resulting child is disabled as a result of the medication, what...
Auteur principal: | |
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Type de support: | Électronique Article |
Langue: | Anglais |
Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
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Publié: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2008
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Dans: |
Bioethics
Année: 2008, Volume: 22, Numéro: 6, Pages: 299-306 |
Sujets non-standardisés: | B
indirect harm
B Cloning B non-identity problem B Markie B Moral Harm |
Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Résumé: | The non-identity problem is the problem of grounding moral wrongdoing in cases in which an action affects who will exist in the future. Consider a woman who intentionally conceives while on medication that is harmful for a fetus. If the resulting child is disabled as a result of the medication, what makes the woman's action morally wrong? I argue that an explanation in terms of harmful rights violations fails, and I focus on Peter Markie's recent rights-based defense. Markie's analysis rests on the notion of an indirect harm, and I show that the calculation of an indirect harm relies on an improper baseline for the determination of whether or not an action adversely affects a patient's interests. I also defend an impersonal duty-based analysis of the wrongdoing in non-identity cases against an objection by Markie. I close by arguing that the rights-based analysis is insensitive to context and that context is morally relevant in the determination of the moral valence of actions in cases of non-identity. This failure provides a pro tanto reason to favor an impersonal duty-based analysis of the wrongdoing in non-identity cases. |
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ISSN: | 1467-8519 |
Contient: | Enthalten in: Bioethics
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2007.00617.x |