Warren's Thought Experiment example essay topic

The thought experiment by Judith Jarvis Thomson, "Diseased Musician" is irrelevant. The two scenarios are completely different. She is talking about a complete stranger compared to a fetus that is inside of you, and part of you. This thought experiment was comparing two different beings. What connects this violinist to you? What makes you want to help them?

Unless they were part of my family or someone I cared about I'd never know them and in turn never feel the need to save them. If a child growing inside me, that is a part of me, needed some help I would gladly do it. Maybe I'm just a cold-hearted person, but I probably wouldn't help this person for nine months, if it were only a few day project than I would probably have no problem helping them out, but to connected to a stranger for nine months wouldn't happen. I don't feel you are morally obligated to help anyone, but yourself.

I also don't feel there is a right or wrong answer to whether or not you actually are morally obligated to help anyone else. The choice is up to the person. They have free-will granted to them at birth to choose their own decisions about things. What happens if sometime over the years after helping this diseased musician you get the disease. It is possible, right? You " ll have their blood coursing through your body.

Suppose some of their blood doesn't leave and it is infecting your body. Now what do you do? Suppose there is no one who matches your blood type except him. Then the whole project will either repeat or he could choose not to go through with it for his own reasons. Now you are left to die because you saved him. It is thought true that the musician is a person therefore it could be murder on your part the you wouldn't help him, but the fetus is not yet a person because it does not have the sufficient criteria yet to be considered a person.

"All we need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person, is that any being which satisfies none of (1) - (5) is certainly not a person" (Warren, 20). According to Warren's thought experiment to be considered a person you must bear these five attributes: consciousness, reasoning, self-motivated activity, the capacity to communicate, and the presence of self-concepts and self-awareness (19). The musician, though unconscious, at one time displayed there attributes, whereas the fetus has not. It would be more morally unacceptable, according to the thought experiment by Warren, to let the musician die because they are already a person. To make this thought experiment more relevant, and keep it along the lines of abortion, another example should be used.

These two objects should be closer to each other. A stranger and your fetus are to different subjects to placed together like they are. If she would have used a fetus with say your husband or family member, then the answer to the moral obligation would be yes.