Moral Theory: A Non-Consequentialist Approach by David S. Oderberg

Someone sent me some pages from Moral Theory by Oderberg. Some of the pages might be missing: I am not sure.

This was, I think, meant to present a perspective on what human rights depend on that would be contrary to, say, most of views presented in the SEP's entry on human rights.

In reading through this, I am not finding much of value. Do you see anything plausible and worthwhile?

Xico

@SellarsFanatic
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3h


Here in Chapter 4.4 of Moral Theory where Oderberg addresses the Human-Person distinction proposed by purveyors of your position. Your argument isn't novel and has been thoroughly addressed by the purveyors of the traditional account of human rights




Yes, saying that biologically human organisms have rights, are persons, etc. simply because they are biologically human organisms is uninformative. This guy agrees. 


missing page(s)?





I'll just mention that everyone, including Singer, can use the language of "kinds." For example, advocates of psychological theories of personal identity think that we are this "kind" of being: we are conscious beings: our essence relates to our mental lives. And such views can explain the very common idea that you before and after a nap are the same person. Do Oderverg's rhetorical questions here suggest that he too asks the "Whatabout sleeping people?? Why is it wrong to kill sleeping people?" question / "objection" to many common views? I hope not.





There are a lot of unanswered rhetorical questions here: that's not good. These questions have some pretty obvious answers too.






The objection seems to be that some have a too high "bar" for being a person. One response here to lower it: since it's good to consider objections and the best versions of views, that should have been discussed, perhaps.


I am also not seeing much in the way of an explanation for why, say, the potential of an embryo to become a person (or a "functioning" person or whatever) entails that it now has the rights of a person, or must be treated as a person, etc. In general, A being a potential X does not entitle A to being treated like an X now: this is well-known and this isn't addressed and the details addressed.






Why are "all humans" all biologically human organisms and not all biologically human organisms that are conscious, or "moral subjects" as Peter Markie suggests? No answer, since at least here there's no discussion of how we are all of many kinds and there's no discussion of how to try to figure out what kind(s) is (or are) the most relevant ones.


About luck, well, we do think that individuals should be treated as individuals: e.g., humans or human beings "in essence" have four limbs, but someone without any limbs should not be treated as if they have four: that would be wrong. So we need details of how this all works: if A is of some essence, then what?



What else was of interest here?