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.

Does Death Harm Animals?

Here is a short post with some thoughtful analysis regarding the topic of our term paper on the moral status of animals (specifically, on non-persons and killing animals):

• Can Death Harm Non-Persons?

I recommend reading it to help you start developing your own arguments on these issues for your paper.

-via FailBlog

Moopheus

A related issue to the ethics of animal research is the ethics of eating animals. Here are some links on that:

• Vegetarians Still Love the Smell of Bacon
• David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster
• How to Cut Back on Meat Slowly
• What Is The Meatrix? (see video below)
  
• What If We Could Make Pain-Free Animals?
  
• Audio Interview: Jeff McMahan on Vegetarianism
  
• Huge List of Resources on the Moral Status of Animals

New Jersey's Own

We're reading an article by well-known philosopher, utilitarian, vegetarian, and New Jersey resident Peter Singer on animal ethics for class. Here's some interviews with him:

• Peter Singer on Michael Vick & Dog Fighting
  
• Audio Interview with Peter Singer
  
• Animal Research (Peter Singer's Sometimes OK with It!)

The Ethics of Killing

I don't often recommend an entire book to students, but if you're interested in some thoughtful analysis of abortion, euthanasia, animals, killing, and personhood, among other things, you should check out Jeff McMahan's The Ethics of Killing. Here's a short description of the book:

"This magisterial work is the first comprehensive study of the ethics of killing, where the moral status of the individual killed is uncertain. Drawing on philosophical notions of personal identity and the immorality of killing, McMahan looks carefully at a host of practical issues, including abortion, infanticide, the killing of animals, assisted suicide, and euthanasia."

McMahan teaches philosophy at Rutgers. (We read his article on prenatal screening.)  He also just wrote a follow-up book called Killing in War (here's an audio interview with him on that book). This is exactly the kind of careful, thought-out approach that I think complicated, serious issues deserve.