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"Boonin, David"
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Should race matter? : unusual answers to the usual questions
\"In this book, philosopher David Boonin attempts to answer the moral questions raised by five important and widely contested racial practices: slave reparations, affirmative action, hate speech restrictions, hate crime laws, and racial profiling. Arguing from premises that virtually everyone on both sides of the debates over these issues already accepts, Boonin arrives at an unusual and unorthodox set of conclusions, one that is neither liberal nor conservative, color conscious nor color blind. Defended with the rigor that has characterized his previous work but written in a more widely accessible style, this provocative and important new book is sure to spark controversy and should be of interest to philosophers, legal theorists, and anyone interested in trying to resolve the debate over these important and divisive issues\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Non-Identity Problem and the Ethics of Future People
Our actions sometimes have an effect not only on the quality of life that people will enjoy in the future, but on which particular people will exist in the future to enjoy it. In cases where this is so, the combination of certain assumptions that most people seem to accept can yield conclusions that most people seem to reject. The resulting puzzle is known as the non-identity problem and it has important implications both for ethical theory and for a number of topics in applied ethics, including controversial issues in bioethics, environmental ethics, and disability ethics. The non-identity problem has been the subject of a great deal of discussion for nearly four decades, but this is the first book-length study devoted exclusively to its examination. The book begins by explaining what the problem is, why the problem matters, and what criteria a solution to the problem must satisfy in order to count as a successful one. It then provides a critical survey of the solutions to the problem that have thus far been proposed in the sizeable literature that the problem has generated and concludes by developing and defending an unorthodox alternative solution, one that differs fundamentally from virtually every other available approach.
eBook
A Defense of Abortion
David Boonin has written the most thorough and detailed case for the moral permissibility of abortion yet published. Critically examining a wide range of arguments that attempt to prove that every human fetus has a right to life, he shows that each of these arguments fails on its own terms. He then explains how even if the fetus does have a right to life, abortion can still be shown to be morally permissible on the critique of abortion's own terms. Finally he considers several pro-life arguments that do not depend on claims that the fetus has a right to life and concludes that these too are ultimately unsuccessful. This major book will be especially helpful to those teaching applied ethics and bioethics in philosophy departments or professional schools of law and medicine. It will interest students of women studies and general readers for whom abortion remains a high-profile issue.
eBook
A defense of abortion
David Boonin has written the most thorough and detailed case for the moral permissibility of abortion yet published. Critically examining a wide range of arguments that attempt to prove that every human fetus has a right to life, he shows that each of these arguments fails on its own terms. He then explains how even if the fetus does have a right to life, abortion can still be shown to be morally permissible on the critique of abortion's own terms. Finally he considers several pro-life arguments that do not depend on claims that the fetus has a right to life and concludes that these too are ultimately unsuccessful. This major book will be especially helpful to those teaching applied ethics and bioethics in philosophy departments or professional schools of law and medicine. It will interest students of women studies and general readers for whom abortion remains a high-profile issue.
eBook
Better to Be
Suppose a couple knows that if they conceive a child, the child's life on the whole will contain a million units of pleasure and a hundred units of pain. Call this the Lucky Couple. If the Lucky Couple decides to conceive, will their act of conceiving harm the resulting child? Most people would say no. To harm a person is to make things worse for that person than they would otherwise be. If the Lucky Couple conceives a child, the child will experience a great balance of pleasure over pain. If the Lucky Couple does not conceive a child, the child will not exist at all, and thus will not experience any pleasure or any pain. It is not worse to experience a great balance of pleasure over pain than not to experience any pleasure or any pain. And so, most people will conclude, if the Lucky Couple decides to conceive, their act of conceiving will not harm the resulting child.
Journal Article
Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: Two Paradoxes About Duties to Future Generations
Boonin-Vail examines Derek Parfit's theory about the duties to future generations that public officials have. Although Parfit's paradox has been deprived of its moral force, it is not without force, for the Goodness Paradox remains theoretically unsettling in its own right.
Journal Article
Taking From the Dead: An Examination of Cadaveric Organ Procurement
Within the last 40 years, post mortem organ transplantation has emerged as a reliable and effective life-saving medical therapy. Since an integral part of organ transplantation involves organ donors, this dissertation considers a series of interrelated ethical and policy questions on donor autonomy. In Chapter 1, I consider presumed consent policies of organ procurement, which presume that people have consented to organ donation if they fail to “opt-out” of donation. I give and defend a novel argument, which implies that the main argument typically offered in favor of a presumed consent policy is unsound. In Chapter 2, I discuss the often-cited “family veto” problem. This problem emerges when a person makes a decision to be an organ donor but after her death her family blocks her decision. Many have argued that the family veto is a clear violation of patient autonomy, but I develop a novel argument that the family veto does not violate the autonomy of deceased donors. In Chapter 3, I consider one of the most fundamental questions in organ procurement policy: must we obtain a patient’s consent before removing her organs for transplantation? I argue that obtaining patient consent before organ removal is not strictly necessary because there are other ways to properly respect patient autonomy that do not involve obtaining consent. In this chapter, I also argue that the kind of consent obtained from donors by current U.S. policy fails to respect patient autonomy. Finally, in Chapter 4, I consider the ethical merits of a conscription policy, a policy on which organs are automatically removed from a person’s body after her death, regardless of whether she decided to donate or not. There is a seemingly powerful argument which demonstrates that implementing an organ conscription policy is a moral obligation, but I suggest that it can be defeated by showing that organ conscription violates at least some people’s posthumous rights regarding their bodies. To do this, I develop an account of posthumous rights and argue that people’s posthumous rights outweigh the interests of living patients who need organs to continue living.
Dissertation