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Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome?
In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best Outcome Argument, aims to criticize the Taurekian idea that it is not worse if more people die than if fewer do in conflict...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Springer Netherlands
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072741/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33935305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00355-1 |
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author | Wang, Xueshi |
author_facet | Wang, Xueshi |
author_sort | Wang, Xueshi |
collection | PubMed |
description | In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best Outcome Argument, aims to criticize the Taurekian idea that it is not worse if more people die than if fewer do in conflict situations, where it is hard to distinguish individuals from one another solely by reference to the relative strength of their claims. I argue that the Best Outcome Argument is flawed for three reasons: (1) the symmetry feature defined by the impartiality principle holds only in a limited class of conflict situations; (2) individuals should be treated in a consistent way throughout the whole process of reasoning; (3) comparative evaluations gained in different contexts, at least in some cases, cannot be used in one and the same argument. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8072741 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Springer Netherlands |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80727412021-04-26 Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? Wang, Xueshi Philosophia (Ramat Gan) Article In this article, I critique a moral argument developed in Frances Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm. The argument, which I label the Best Outcome Argument, aims to criticize the Taurekian idea that it is not worse if more people die than if fewer do in conflict situations, where it is hard to distinguish individuals from one another solely by reference to the relative strength of their claims. I argue that the Best Outcome Argument is flawed for three reasons: (1) the symmetry feature defined by the impartiality principle holds only in a limited class of conflict situations; (2) individuals should be treated in a consistent way throughout the whole process of reasoning; (3) comparative evaluations gained in different contexts, at least in some cases, cannot be used in one and the same argument. Springer Netherlands 2021-04-26 2022 /pmc/articles/PMC8072741/ /pubmed/33935305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00355-1 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021 This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic. |
spellingShingle | Article Wang, Xueshi Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title | Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title_full | Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title_fullStr | Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title_full_unstemmed | Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title_short | Saving Lives: For the Best Outcome? |
title_sort | saving lives: for the best outcome? |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072741/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33935305 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00355-1 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT wangxueshi savinglivesforthebestoutcome |