Permissible killing and the irrelevance of being human

Journal of Ethics

Volumn 12, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 57-80

  Kumar, Rahul ^a  

^a QUEEN S UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Abortion; Euthanasia; Jeff McMahan; Permissible killing; Species membership

Indexed keywords

EID: 36749015765     PISSN: 13824554     EISSN: 15728609     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10892-007-9021-8     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 360.
2. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 322. Though I believe this example nicely illustrates the point, McMahan offers it for a slightly different purpose, concerning the relevance of potential as a source of interests, rather than its relevance for questions of moral status. He offers a different set of examples to argue that potential is not a source of moral status, which will be taken up in the second part of this discussion.
3. David Velleman, "A Right to Self-Termination?" Ethics 109 (1999), pp. 606-628.
4. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 484.
5. This is a position that Kant, at least as I read the Groundwork, need not disagree with. The case he cites in discussing the prohibition against suicide is of a person who wishes to escape a "trying condition." A state of intense and unrelenting suffering is surely something different in kind than a "trying condition."
6. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, pp. 502-503.
7. Here I have in mind the account of well-being advanced in Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), though I do not intend the approach to evaluating well-being that I have gestured at to be an adequate gloss on Raz's account.
8. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 147.
9. See a fascinating discussion of this issue in Michael Thompson, "Apprehending Human Form," in Anthony O'Hear (ed.), Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 47-74.
10. In this paragraph, I follow an approach advanced in Joseph Raz, Value, Respect, and Attachment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 161-164. Raz's claim, is that respect for something's value requires that one have certain attitudes towards it, and that one protect and preserve it. There is no requirement, however, to promote that which is of value.
11. What respect for the value of the life of different human animals requires is a distinct and open question; it is hard to believe that whatever the best account of those demands are, they will require better treatment of non-human animals than they now receive. Note that the separation of the question of what the moral norms are that ought to govern the treatment of non-human animals from those that ought to govern how humans treat one another marks a significant methodological difference between the kind of approach I am suggesting and McMahan's approach. On his approach, what we have is just one set of norms that governs how animals, as opposed to persons, ought to be treated, whether they are human or non-human.
12. McMahan treats young children who are not infants as falling in an indeterminate zone between those who fall within the scope of the morality of interests and those who fall, within the morality of respect. McMahan acknowledges that it is not obvious what to say what morality requires and permits with respect to those who fall into this interdeterminate zone, but takes this to be a problem for all moral theories, not just his. Whether he is correct on this point is an important question, which cannot be pursued here; but, see the discussion of this point in Tim Mulgan, "Critical Notice of The Ethics of Killing," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (2004), pp. 447-460.
13. On the approach I am recommending, the defense of the moral permissibility of abortion will have to proceed along the lines of the argument advanced the Judith Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1 (1971), pp. 47-66. McMahan presents a detailed critique of this position, the assessment of which I cannot pursue here.
14. McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 319.
15. One natural line of argument at this point is that the cognitively impaired are simply a different species than those who lack cognitive defects. This strikes me as an implausible suggestion. Cognitive impairment is usually understood as the consequence of something having gone wrong. Hence the cognitively disadvantaged are members of the human species who have not developed the normal capacities for human beings, rather than those who have the normal capacities for members of their species.
16. I do not think that much is to be learnt from reflection on the case of Anencephalic infants. As McMahan himself points out, there are no firm, commonsense convictions regarding what is morally permissible with respect to these infants (McMahan, The Ethics of Killing, p. 208).
17. For helpful discussion of many of the issues discussed here, I am grateful to the students in my graduate ethics seminar in the fall of 2004. Also, thanks to Jeff McMahan for helpful clarification of his views at crucial points.