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Judith Thomson provided one of the most striking and effective thought experiments in the moral realm. Her example is aimed at a popular anti-abortion argument that goes something like this: the fetus is an innocent person. All innocent persons have a right to life. Abortion results in the death of a fetus. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong. In her thought experiment we are asked to imagine a famous violinist falling into a coma. The society of music lovers determines from medical records that you and you alone can save the violinist's life by being hooked up to him for nine months. The music lovers break into your home while you are asleep and hook the unconscious (and unknowing, hence innocent) violinist to you. You may want to unhook him, but you are then faced with this argument put forward by the music lovers: The violinist is an innocent person. All innocent persons have a right to life. Unhooking him will result in his death. Therefore, unhooking him is morally wrong.
Questions: Why wasn't this immediately laughed out the room due to the obvious non-parallel due the person (or, I) not choosing to have sex knowing the risk of pregnancy?
Judith Thomson went to Cambridge and Columbia. Why has spending 9001 hours in the philosophical trenches, reading Hegel, Kant, Plato, and many others, not given her reasoning powers well beyond a layman? Why have I never seen a single instance of a philosopher stepping in to the trollley problem / abortion problem / ANY problem and giving a profound solution that doesn't rely on new axioms? I have made many topics on this board about the fact that ALL philosophy is merely the selection of arbitrary axioms and criteria, yet everyone here disagrees and claims that Philosophers have the ability to transcend the reasoning powers of laymen. Well, I don't see any evidence of it here. Can you show me evidence of it anywhere?
Rant below:
This is a fucking joke, right? OBVIOUSLY, it's not a parallel situation because the person (or, I) didn't choose to have sex and know there was a risk of pregnancy.
I don't really care about this moral problem. It's just another example of a philosopher having absolutely NOTHING non-trivial to say when they venture out of their self-referential government subsidised safe space. The pseudointellectuals love telling us that time spent listening to Plato masturbate over his ideal society or Hegel's sooper dooper special reasoning system that he can't simply clearly state because it's so sooper dooper special and smart (yet nobody ever used it to become rich or make scientific discoveries even though it's so correct and sooper dooper)
According to Philosophy apologists, "Moral frameworks aren't just an arbitrary selection of axioms and criteria! They give you super special reasoning powers above regular people! They allow you to transcend the axioms-criteria-deduction reasoning of commoners!"
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