An Introduction to
Ethics
Applied Ethics: Animal Rights and Abortion
Applied Ethics?
 Normative ethics aims to answer the question: ‘what
principle, if any, should we follow?’, or ‘by what
standard should an action be judged good or bad?’.
 Applied, or ‘practical’, ethics examines concrete cases
and looks at how the normative considerations can
guide our judgements in problematic (disputable)
cases.
Applied Ethics
 Topics of interest include:
 Abortion
 Euthanasia
 Animal Rights
 Suicide
 Free Speech
 Drug Use
Applied Ethics
 The most prominent applied ethicist is, without a doubt,
Peter Singer whose book ‘Practical Ethics’ raised many
of the debates we have today.
Animal Rights
 One of Singer’s most important contributions (and
certainly the one he’s most noted for) is to the debate
surrounding Animal Rights…
Animal Rights
 Singer begins his paper ‘All animals are equal’ by looking at
a variety of ‘liberation movements’ (black emancipation,
female suffrage, &c.).
 Equality is a problematic term – if everyone should have
equal rights (e.g. men should have the right to an
abortion)…
 We do not have equal rights, therefore… we are not equal?
 What are we then asserting when we say all human beings,
despite race, creed, gender, &c., are equal?
Animal Rights
 Equality of talents? (obviously not.)
 People seem to be different in almost every respect…
different physical features, dispositions, feelings, skills,
mental capacities, physical capacities &c.
 Should we, then, jettison the idea of equality as
something to strive for?
Animal Rights
 Well, no. Knowing a person’s race, sex (or whatever)
will not tell you anything about that person’s capacities
– there are no differences between the races and
sexes ‘as such’.
 Does this help the ‘egalitarian’?
 Plea to dignity…
Animal Rights
 What’s all this got to do with animal rights?
 We extend certain rights to humans – regardless of that
human’s capacity. The Professor of Philosophy at
Cambridge has as many rights (generally speaking) as
the village idiot.
 Why do we stop with humans?
Animal Rights
 Speciesism
 Talk of humans vs. animals might be problematic…
 Two pictures:
{humans} {animals} – humans and animals are distinct
(exclusive) sets.
Animal Rights
 Speciesism
 Talk of humans vs. animals might be problematic…
 Two pictures:
{humans} {animals} – humans and animals are distinct
(exclusive) sets.
Animals = {humans and non-humans} – humans are a
sort of animal.
Animal Rights
 Speciesism
 We should probably accept picture two – but we act as
if picture one were true.
 If picture two is true – and if we should be extending
rights to things that are different in capacity (animals
are different in ‘degree’ not in ‘type’), then why
shouldn’t animals be ‘bearers of rights’?
Animal Rights
 If women and men have a different set of rights (men
don’t have a right to an abortion – that would be just
plain strange), then can’t we say animals have a
different set of rights still?
 What rights should we grant a non-human
person?(person = bearer of rights)
Animal Rights
 Quick questions
 Should animal suffering be regarded as ‘less important’
than human suffering? What justification do we have
for this?
 Is speciesism as bad as racism/sexism/x-ism?
Break
Abortion
 Two thoughts…
1. A woman has a right to decide what happens in and to
her body.
2. All persons have a right to life.
 Holding these two premises could cause problems for
discussing abortion…
Abortion
 Thought one can accommodate the view that abortion
is permissible.
 Thought two might not.
 Thoughts for thought two?
Abortion
 All persons have the right to life.
 What counts as a ‘person’?
 Does this ‘right’ trump ALL OTHER considerations?
Abortion
 All persons have the right to life.
 What counts as a ‘person’?
 Person from conception?
 If not, why not?
‘[…] to choose a point in this development and say “before this
point the thing is not a person, after this point it is a person” is
to make an arbitrary choice, a choice for which the nature of
things no good reason can be given.’
(Judith Jarvis Thompson)
Abortion
 Does this ‘right’ trump ALL OTHER considerations?
1. Threat to mother’s health?
2. Incest/Rape (classic cases)?
3. Inconvenience?
Abortion
1. Threat to mother’s health.
Suppose a woman has become pregnant, and now learns
that she has a cardiac condition such that she will die if
she carries the baby to term. What may be done for her?
The foetus, being a person, has a right to life, but as the
mother is a person too, so has she a right to life.
Presumably, they have an equal right to life?
Abortion
2. Incest/Rape.
Why should the circumstances of conception matter to the
foetus?
Does the ‘moral status’ of the foetus change depending
on how it was conceived?
Imagine:
‘Sorry, you don’t have a right to life as you weren’t
conceived in a morally satisfactory way.’
Responses?
Abortion
3. Inconvenience/balance of suffering
The (potential) mother might have ‘current projects’ and a
goal directed future a child might interrupt. Given (or,
perhaps, assuming) the foetus does not feel pain at a
certain point of its development, and given that the mother
will be aggrieved to abandon her projects, then the
balance of suffering weighs in favour of the woman’s right
to an abortion.
Good argument?
Abortion
 A woman has a right to decide what happens in and to
her body.
 Do ‘rights to life’ trump a woman’s right to decide what
happens in and to her body?
Abortion
 JJ Thomson’s ‘violinist case’:
You wake up in the morning and you find yourself back to
back in bed with an unconscious [famous] violinist. He
has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the
Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available
medical records and found that you alone have the right
blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you,
and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was
plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to
extract poisons from his blood as well as your own.
Abortion
The director of the hospital now tells you, “Look, we’re
sorry the Society of Music Lovers did this to you – we
would never have permitted it if we had known. But still,
they did it, and the violinsit now is plugged into you. To
unplug you would be to kill him. But never mind, it’s only
for nine months. […]” Is it morally incumbent on you to
accede to this situation? No doubt it would be very nice
of you if you did, a great kindness. But do you have to
accede to it? What if it were not nine months, but nine
years?
Abortion
What if the director of the hospital says, “Tough luck, I
agree, but you’ve now got to stay in bed, with the violinist
plugged into you, for the rest of your life. Because
remember this. All persons have a right to life, and
violinists are persons. Granted you have a right to decide
what happens in and to your body, but a person’s right to
life outweighs your right to decide what happens in and to
your body…
Abortion
 Thoughts?