Department of Philosophy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Bioethics. 2020 Feb;34(2):203-206. doi: 10.1111/bioe.12692. Epub 2019 Nov 26.
Eric Vogelstein has defended Don Marquis' 'future-like-ours' argument for the immorality of abortion against what is known as the Identity Objection, which contends that for a fetus to have a future like ours, it must be numerically identical to an entity like us that possesses valuable experiences some time in the future. On psychological accounts of personal identity, there is no identity relationship between the fetus and the entity with valuable experiences that it will become. Vogelstein maintains that a non-sentient fetus nonetheless has a future like ours because it is numerically identical with a future organism that has a mind that bears valuable experiences. Skott Brill, drawing on Jeff McMahan's embodied mind account, denies that human organisms directly have experiences, claiming that they only have experiences derivatively by virtue of their thinking part, and the loss of a future like ours is not transferred to the organism. I show that on McMahan's account, a strong case can be made for the organism having experiences directly, and the subject having these experiences derivatively. This negates Brill's reasoning, although it does imply that non-sentient fetuses do not have a future like ours in quite the same way as we do. I conclude that this is not problematic for Marquis' argument.
埃里克·沃格尔斯坦(Eric Vogelstein)为唐·马奎斯(Don Marquis)关于堕胎不道德的“未来相似论”辩护,反对所谓的“身份异议”,该异议认为,胎儿要拥有像我们这样的未来,它必须在数值上与我们未来的某个实体相同,而该实体在未来的某个时刻拥有有价值的经验。在个人身份的心理学解释中,胎儿和将拥有有价值经验的实体之间没有身份关系。沃格尔斯坦认为,一个没有意识的胎儿仍然有一个像我们这样的未来,因为它在数值上与一个拥有心灵并拥有有价值经验的未来生物体相同。斯科特·布里尔(Skott Brill)借鉴杰夫·麦克马汉(Jeff McMahan)的具身心灵观点,否认人类生物体直接拥有经验,声称它们只是通过其思维部分而间接地拥有经验,并且我们的未来不会转移到生物体上。我表明,根据麦克马汉的观点,可以有力地证明生物体直接拥有经验,而主体则间接地拥有这些经验。这否定了布里尔的推理,尽管这确实意味着没有意识的胎儿并不像我们一样拥有未来。我得出的结论是,这对马奎斯的论点并没有问题。