Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans

Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 151­170 Editions Rodopi © 2006 Robert Lane I provide an account of the moral status of pre-birth humans that integrates ideas from Charles Peirce, including: synechism, the idea that "all that exists is continuous"; the reality of "Seconds," independently existing individual entities; and Peirce's pragmatic conceptions of truth and reality. This account implies that destroying a pre-birth human is determinately moral very soon after conception and determinately immoral very late in pregnancy. But it also implies that during much of gestation, destroying a pre-birth human is of indeterminate moral status, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral. I am a pragmatic bioethicist. I know this now, but it took me some time to realize it. The "bioethicist" part is obvious. Some of my published research has dealt with moral questions relevant to human reproduction, and I teach courses in ethics that touch on those issues. That I am a pragmatist is also obvious. I have an interest in and regularly teach courses on classical American pragmatism, and some of my research focuses on aspects of the work of the classical American pragmatists. But until relatively recently, I did not realize that http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Pragmatism Brill

Synechistic Bioethics: A Peircean View of the Moral Status of Pre-Birth Humans

Lane, Robert
Contemporary Pragmatism , Volume 3 (2): 151 – Apr 21, 2006
Download PDF
20 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/brill/synechistic-bioethics-a-peircean-view-of-the-moral-status-of-pre-birth-exbdI9FISz

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
1572-3429
eISSN
1875-8185
DOI
10.1163/18758185-90000051
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 3, No. 2 (December 2006), 151­170 Editions Rodopi © 2006 Robert Lane I provide an account of the moral status of pre-birth humans that integrates ideas from Charles Peirce, including: synechism, the idea that "all that exists is continuous"; the reality of "Seconds," independently existing individual entities; and Peirce's pragmatic conceptions of truth and reality. This account implies that destroying a pre-birth human is determinately moral very soon after conception and determinately immoral very late in pregnancy. But it also implies that during much of gestation, destroying a pre-birth human is of indeterminate moral status, neither determinately moral nor determinately immoral. I am a pragmatic bioethicist. I know this now, but it took me some time to realize it. The "bioethicist" part is obvious. Some of my published research has dealt with moral questions relevant to human reproduction, and I teach courses in ethics that touch on those issues. That I am a pragmatist is also obvious. I have an interest in and regularly teach courses on classical American pragmatism, and some of my research focuses on aspects of the work of the classical American pragmatists. But until relatively recently, I did not realize that

Journal

Contemporary Pragmatism – Brill

Published: Apr 21, 2006

There are no references for this article.