• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research
    • UA Theses and Dissertations
    • Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • UA Graduate and Undergraduate Research
    • UA Theses and Dissertations
    • Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of UA Campus RepositoryCommunitiesTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisherJournalThis CollectionTitleAuthorsIssue DateSubmit DateSubjectsPublisherJournal

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    About

    AboutUA Faculty PublicationsUA DissertationsUA Master's ThesesUA Honors ThesesUA PressUA YearbooksUA CatalogsUA Libraries

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    Becoming persons: The ethical problems of potentiality, identity, and kinds.

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    azu_td_9024630_sip1_m.pdf
    Size:
    4.272Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Description:
    azu_td_9024630_sip1_m.pdf
    Download
    Author
    Covey, Edward Hume.
    Issue Date
    1990
    Keywords
    Philosophy
    Advisor
    Feinberg, Joel
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Publisher
    The University of Arizona.
    Rights
    Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
    Abstract
    The case of human development is taken as a paradigm for rights of development and duties to cause development. I argue that our standard intuitions about the moral status of infants presuppose that we ascribe genuine moral significance (including rights of development) to non-persons. A number of considerations (both intuitive and formal) seem to lead to the thesis that there are no necessary conditions for membership in our moral community, or the nearly-equivalent thesis that certain sorts of potentiality are sufficient for rights of development. Both are tentatively defended throughout this work. In the theses suggested above, both the logical and physical possibility of the development in question would be necessary conditions for the applicability of rights of development or duties to cause development. I analyze and evaluate the general claim that potentiality is a ground for moral rights, and investigate whether the physical impossibility of becoming might block some of the supposed counterintuitive implications of potentiality principles. I argue that identity conditions form metaphysical constraints on ethical potentiality principles, ruling out the prescription of many kinds of "becoming" even with any thesis that potentiality entails rights of development. A crucial distinction is drawn between two ordinary-language senses of 'become'. I find no metaphysical grounds, and no specifically moral grounds, for considering kind membership (e.g., species) as morally significant per se, although it remains undecided whether there are reasons for such significance that are grounded in the practical constraints of application of moral principles. Changes of kind do not have significant implications for the limits of potentiality reasoning except inasfar as they are tied up with identity conditions of individuals. It is concluded that our considered intuitions about the moral status of infant development could be generated by several types of theory, all involving some sort of potentiality thesis, and that some potentiality theories are far less problematic than they initially appear to be.
    Type
    text
    Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic)
    Degree Name
    Ph.D.
    Degree Level
    doctoral
    Degree Program
    Philosophy
    Graduate College
    Degree Grantor
    University of Arizona
    Collections
    Dissertations

    entitlement

     
    The University of Arizona Libraries | 1510 E. University Blvd. | Tucson, AZ 85721-0055
    Tel 520-621-6442 | repository@u.library.arizona.edu
    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2017  DuraSpace
    Quick Guide | Contact Us | Send Feedback
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.