Stages of life: A new metaphysics of conceptionism
When a human being comes into existence is crucial in bioethics. Conceptionism is the view that a human being comes into existence at conception. The twinning argument is an influential objection to this view. All versions of the twinning argument rely on a metaphysics of material objects, namely, e...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Contributors: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2019]
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| In: |
Bioethics
Year: 2019, Volume: 33, Issue: 4, Pages: 529-535 |
| IxTheo Classification: | NBE Anthropology NCH Medical ethics |
| Further subjects: | B
Zygote
B embryo ethics B exdurantism B monozygotic twinning B Metaphysics |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | When a human being comes into existence is crucial in bioethics. Conceptionism is the view that a human being comes into existence at conception. The twinning argument is an influential objection to this view. All versions of the twinning argument rely on a metaphysics of material objects, namely, endurantism. Given this, a strategy for defending conceptionism against the twinning argument is to deny endurantism and adopt an alternative metaphysics of material objects. A version of this strategy which has been debated in this journal is to adopt perdurantism, or the ‘multiple occupancy view’, on which monozygotic twins share the zygote region as a temporal part. We present a novel version of this strategy: conceptionists can evade the twinning argument by adopting an exdurantist metaphysics of material objects. We suggest reasons for thinking that this is a plausible and, indeed, preferable way for conceptionists to avoid the twinning argument. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-8519 |
| Reference: | Kritik in "Metaphysics to the rescue? (2020)"
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Bioethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/bioe.12556 |