The Moorean argument for the full moral status of those with profound intellectual disability: a rejoinder to Roberts

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Curtis, B. ORCID: 0000-0001-8433-9201 and Vehmas, S., 2016. The Moorean argument for the full moral status of those with profound intellectual disability: a rejoinder to Roberts. Journal of Medical Ethics, 42 (4), pp. 266-267. ISSN 0306-6800

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Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2016-103437

Abstract

In a recent paper we argued that a Moorean strategy can be employed to justify our continued belief in the following proposition, even in the presence of philosophical views that entail it is false, without any philosophical argument against those views, and without any positive philosophical argument in its favour: H>A: Humans have an equal moral status that is higher than the moral status of non-human animals. The basic idea is that our confidence in the truth of this proposition is greater than our confidence in the propositions that make up those philosophical views that entail it is false, and that this is sufficient to justify rejecting those views and continue to believe H>A.
Roberts has recently responded to our suggestion by claiming: (i) Although the Moorean strategy is valid, it is not powerful. (ii) A resort to the Moorean strategy reflects too great a pessimism about the accounts available that purport to justify H>A.2. In this short rejoinder we explain why we think that Roberts's two claims are false.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Journal of Medical Ethics

Creators:

Curtis, B. and Vehmas, S.

Publisher:

BMJ Publishing Group

Date:

2016

Volume:

Number: