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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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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Wang, Xueshi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2021
Materias:
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.
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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
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