When Killing Is Not Wrong
| Abstract | Any discussion of the ethics of voluntary euthanasia must begin by considering whether it can ever be right to kill an innocent human being. The view that this can never be right gains its strongest support from religious doctrines that claim that only humans are made in the image of God, or that only humans have an immortal soul, or that God gave us dominion over the animals-meaning that we can kill them if we wish-but reserved to himself dominion over human beings. Reject these ideas, and it is difficult to think of any morally relevant properties that separate human beings with severe brain damage or other major intellectual disabilities from nonhuman animals at a similar mental level. For why should the fact that a being is a member of our species make it worse to kill that being than it is to kill a member of another species, if the two individuals have similar intellectual abilities or if the nonhuman has superior intellectual abilities? | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,701 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Only published papers are available at libraries |
Similar books and articlesPeter Singer (1979). Killing Humans and Killing Animals. Inquiry 22 (1-4):145 – 156.
Michael Lockwood (1979). Singer on Killing and the Preference for Life. Inquiry 22 (1-4):157 – 170.
Evelyn B. Pluhar (1988). When is It Morally Acceptable to Kill Animals? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 1 (3):211-224.
Jan Deckers (2009). Vegetarianism, Sentimental or Ethical? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 22 (6).
Evelyn Pluhar (1992). Who Can Be Morally Obligated to Be a Vegetarian? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 5 (2).
W. Sinnott-Armstrong & F. G. Miller (2013). What Makes Killing Wrong? Journal of Medical Ethics 39 (1):3-7.
George S. Cave (1982). Animals, Heidegger, and the Right to Life. Environmental Ethics 4 (3):249-254.
Jeff McMahan (2005). The Basis of Moral Liability to Defensive Killing. Philosophical Issues 15 (1):386–405.
Helen Frowe (2008). Equating Innocent Threats and Bystanders. Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 (4):277-290.
Hugh Lehman (1988). On the Moral Acceptability of Killing Animals. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 1 (2):155-162.
Helen Frowe (forthcoming). Killing John to Save Mary: A Defence of the Distinction Between Killing and Letting Die. In J. Campbell, M. O’Rourke & H. Silverstein (eds.), Action, Ethics and Responsibility. MIT Press.
Rahul Kumar (2008). Permissible Killing and the Irrelevance of Being Human. Journal of Ethics 12 (1):57 - 80.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2010-12-22Total downloads22 ( #56,242 of 549,122 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,361 of 549,122 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
