Abstract
What beings are we obliged not to kill? ‘Persons’ leaps rapidly to the lips of most. A sustained colloquy would perhaps elicit numerous exceptions: except when guilty of a heinous offense, except in times of war, and so forth. The grounds of these exceptions are worth wondering about; the grounds of the obligation still more. And we might ask whether it is only persons that we are obliged not to kill, or do we have such obligations to other beings as well? What I will argue is that consciousness, simple or reflexive, is sufficient for imposing on us a prima facie obligation not to kill its subject.
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References
For a survey of some theories of pleasure, see D. Perry, The Concept of Pleasure (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1976).
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© 1983 The HUMANA Press Inc.
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Jamieson, D. (1983). Killing Persons and Other Beings. In: Miller, H.B., Williams, W.H. (eds) Ethics and Animals. Contemporary Issues in Biomedicine, Ethics, and Society. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5623-6_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-5623-6_9
Publisher Name: Humana Press
Print ISBN: 978-0-89603-053-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-5623-6
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