Term Paper Guideline

Due Date: The beginning of class on Friday, December 16th, 2011

Worth: 15% of your final grade

Assignment: Write an argumentative essay on the topic below. Papers must be typed,
and must be between 600-1200 words long. Provide a word count on the first page of the paper. (Most programs like Microsoft Word have automatic word counts.)

Topic: Explain and defend your definition of person as it relates to morality, and
specifically to the ethics of abortion, stem-cell research, impaired infants, and animal research.

(1) First, briefly explain and critically evaluate the different definitions of “person” that we have discussed in class. Be sure to consider each definition offered by Mary Anne Warren, Insoo Hyun, Gerard Magill and William Neaves, Tristram Engelhardt, John Robertson, and Carl Cohen.

(2) Second, explain how each of the following authors uses the concept of “person” to attempt to settle the particular ethical debate she or he wrote about (Warren and Don Marquis on abortion; Hyun and Magill & Neaves on stem-cell research; Engelhardt and Robertson on impaired infants; and Peter Singer and Cohen on animal research).
[NOTE: Some of these authors think personhood is irrelevant to their issue.]

(3) Third, explain and defend your own definition of “person”: do you agree with one of these authors’ definitions, or do you have one of your own?

(4) Fourth, explain the solution your definition of “person” gives to the ethics of abortion, stem-cell research, impaired infants, and animal research.

When considering your definition of person, be sure to consider and answer the following questions: Which living entities are persons, and which living entities are not persons? Do you believe one needs to be a person in the moral sense in order to be worthy of moral consideration (for instance, do some non-persons have a right to not be killed and a right to not suffer unnecessarily)? Do persons have special moral significance? Can someone have moral rights before they have moral duties? Be sure to fully explain and philosophically defend each of your answers.

Quiz #2

We're having another quiz! Quiz #2 is worth 10% of your overall grade, and will be held at the beginning of class on Monday, November 28th. You'll have about 25 minutes to complete it. It will consist of about 6 short answer questions, and will be on everything we've covered since the test:

• abortion (Warren and Marquis articles)
• stem cells (Hyun and Magill & Neaves articles)
• prenatal screening (McMahan and Davis articles)
• cloning (Kass and Strong articles)
• homosexual parenting (Hanscombe article)
• impaired infants (Engelhardt and Robertson articles)
• euthanasia (Callahan, Rachels, and Nesbitt articles)

Infants

Here are some links related to our class section on the ethics of treating infants with severe impairments:

• Disability rights attorney Harriet McBryde Johnson, who was born with a congenital muscular disease, wrote a fascinating account of meeting philosopher Peter Singer, who has argued that it is sometimes morally acceptable to withhold treatment from impaired infants.
• Singer's book on this topic (and others) is called Practical Ethics.
• McBryde Johnson's memoir is titled Too Late to Die Young.
• McBryde Johnson also argued to keep Terri Schiavo alive before the courts decided in favor of euthanasia. 
• Here's a lengthy TV interview with McBryde Johnson by a philosopher.