Please read the following quotation from a controversial article on the killing

Question

Please read the following quotation from a controversial article on the killing of a new born: The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual. Our point he harmed by a decision to deprive her of X re is that...a necessary condition for a subject to have a right to X is that she is Those who are only capable of experiencing pain and pleasure (like perhaps fetuses and cer- tainly newborns) have a right not to be inflicted pain. If, in addition to experiencing pain and pleasure, an individual is capable of making any aims (like actual human and non-human per- sons), she is harmed if she is prevented from accomplishing her aims by being killed. Now hardly can a newborn be said to have aims It might start having expectations and develop a minimum level of self-awareness at a very early stage, but not in the first days or few weeks after birth. (From Ethics, 2012) Giubilini-Minerva, After-birth abortion: why should the baby ltve?, Journal of Medical Please do the following: (a) Identify the conclusion of the argument. (b) Identify the premises of the argument. (c) Summarize the argument in terms of if-then statements. Few sentences will be enough (d) Does th e) Is it a deductively valid argument, inductively valid argument, or neither? Explain. (0 Is the argument good? Explain. Remember the two features of a good argument. e argument, explicitly or implicitly, identify necessary conditions? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

a) Conclusions: Fetuses and new borns have no aims and thus are not deprived of aims if they are killed. So right to life of an individual cannot be attributed to them

b) Premise is that one can have a right to anyting if he/she is deprived of something if that right isn't fulfilled
Another premise is that newborns and fetuses have no aims

c) If a new born or fetus has any aims then killing them would mean depriving them of fulfillment of aims
if someone is capable of experiencing pain and pleasure then he/she should be be inflicted pain
if someone lacks properties that justify the attribution of a right to life of an individual then he/she is morally equivalent to a foetus

d) Necessary conditions are that someone should not lack properties to justify attribution of a right to life of an individual, so as to not be morally equivalent to foetus;
Necessary condition for someone to not be derpived of fulfilling their aims in life is for one to be able to have aims

e) It's an inductively valid argument since the statements are mentioned first and below justification supports the statement

f) The argument is good (although morally gruesome) because it makes a premise of necessarily having aims to be able to fulfill them and later justifies by saying that since fetus or new borns cannot have aims so killing them does not mean depriving them of accomplishing those aims.

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